windflower

wind +‎ flower

windflower (plural windflowers)

1. An early spring flowering species of the family Ranunculaceae (Anemone nemorosa).
   • 1649, Nicholas Culpeper, A physicall directory, or, A translation of the London dispensatory made by the Colledge of Physicians in London‎, London: Peter Cole, page 40:

     Herba venti, Anemone. Wind flower, the juyce snuffed up the nose purgeth the head, it cleanseth filthy ulcers, encreaseth milk in nurses, and outwardly by ointment helps Leprosyes.

   • 1881, Christina Rossetti, “One Foot on the Sea, and One on Shore”, in A Pageant and Other Poems‎, London: Macmillan, page 95:

     “When windflowers blossom on the sea
     And fishes skim along the plain,
     Then we who part this weary day,
     Then you and I shall meet again.”

   • 1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter VIII, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, authorized British edition, London: Martin Secker […], published February 1932 (May 1932 printing), →OCLC, page 101:

     The first windflowers were out, and all the wood seemed pale with the pallor of endless little anemones, sprinkling the shaken floor.

   • 1963, Aldous Huxley, chapter 7, in Island‎, New York: Bantam, page 101:

     “ […] We spent an hour in a hazel copse, picking primroses and looking at the little white windflowers. One doesn’t pick the windflowers,” he explained, “because in an hour they’re withered. […] ”

• wood anemone, European thimbleweed, smell fox