Wood anemones are the first wild flowers to bloom in Durham University's woodlands, often in early March, long before the bluebells flower. There are some particularly fine patches of wood anemone in Little High Wood, on the hill to the south of the Science Site.
The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, writing in his Naturalis Historia, recorded the ancient Greek belief that the winds that blew in spring brought these flowers into bloom - which is how anemones came to be named after the Greek word for wind, anemos, and why they are still sometimes known as windflowers. The flowers are carried on very slender stalks and tremble in the slightest breeze.
Wood anemones grow very slowly, from a creeping rhizome that extends just a centimetre or two each year, so some of the large patches in Little High Wood are likely to decades old.
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