Anemone knowltonia was previously known as Knowltonia capensis. The genus Knowltonia was established by Salisbury in 1796 for the southern African species of Ranunculaceae previously placed in the genus Adonis. However, it was soon realised that Knowltonia was more closely allied to Anemone and it was formally included in Anemone by Prantl in 1891. Later South African botanists reinstated Knowltonia as a separate genus, although the differences between them are slight, the main one being that Knowltonia has a fleshy fruit wall whereas it is dry in Anemone. A wide morphological and molecular study of many species in the Ranunculaceae in 1994 concluded that Knowltonia should be included within Anemone, however it was only formally subsumed within Anemone again in 2009. It is now recognized as a lineage of Anemone that has radiated in southern Africa.

The name Anemone comes from a Greek legend where red anemones grew on Mount Olympus from blood shed by Adonis when he was killed by a wild boar. The name is derived from an ancient word, nahamea, meaning ‘handsome’, which is also the meaning of Adonis. This species, and the former genus, is named in honour of Thomas Knowlton (1691–1781), an English botanist and director of the once famous Botanic Garden at Eltham.

Ranunculaceae, also known as the buttercup family, comprises about 50 genera and 800 species that occur worldwide. Seven genera and about 17 species are found in southern Africa.

Other indigenous members of this family worth mentioning are Clematis brachiata (traveller's joy), a lovely climber with scented, cream-coloured flowers followed by clusters of seeds with persistant feathery 'tails' and Anemone tenuifolia, a perennial that blooms most profusely after veld fires, making a splendid show of white or pink on the higher Cape mountains.