Brewer's: The Adonis Flower

according to Bion, is the rose; Pliny (i. 23) says it is the anemone; others say it is the field poppy, certainly the prince of weeds; but what we now generally mean by the Adonis flower is pheasant's eye, called in French goute-de-sang, because in fable it sprang from the blood of the gored hunter.

“Blood brings forth roses, tears anemone.”

—Bion: Elegy on Adonis.

See also Ovid: Metamorphoses, Bk. x., Fable 15.

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