Adonis

In Greek mythology, a beautiful youth loved by the goddess Aphrodite. He was killed while boar-hunting but was allowed to return from the underworld for a period every year to rejoin her. The anemone sprang from his blood.

Worshipped as a god of vegetation, he was known as Tammuz in Babylonia, Assyria, and Phoenicia (where it was his sister Ishtar who brought him from the underworld). He seems also to have been identified with Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld.

There are two versions of two aspects of the Greek story. Aphrodite, impressed by the beauty of the child Adonis, placed him in a box and gave him to Persephone, queen of the underworld, to look after. Persephone also admired the child and refused to give him back to Aphrodite until Zeus had arbitrated between the two goddesses. One version of the judgement tells that, when Zeus decreed that Adonis should spend a third of every year with each goddess and have the remaining third to himself, Adonis chose to spend his own third with Aphrodite. The other version makes the muse Calliope the umpire (Zeus being unwilling to judge) and indicates that she assigned half of the year to each goddess. There are also two versions of his end. One tells that he was killed by the charge of a wild boar and Aphrodite, so sorrowful at his loss, made a blood-red anemone spring up from his shed blood. The other tells that Aphrodite prevailed on Persephone to restore him to earth for four months every year, starting in the springtime.

Adonis

In botany, a genus of annual and perennial herbs of the Ranunculaceae (buttercup) family, natives of Europe and Asia. The perennial A. vernalis has large, yellow spring flowers; A. aestivalis and A. autumnalis, also known as pheasant's eyes, are annuals with scarlet petals; and A. amurensis is a Japanese perennial for the greenhouse.