Common Meadow Buttercup; Tall Crowfoot; Kingcups; Cuckoo Flower;
Goldcups; Butter-flowers; Blister-flowers
_Ranunculus acris_
_Flowers_--Bright, shining yellow, about 1 in. across, numerous,
terminating long slender footstalks. Calyx of 5 spreading sepals;
corolla of 5 petals; yellow stamens and carpels. _Stem:_ Erect, branched
above, hairy (sometimes nearly smooth), 2 to 3 feet tall, from fibrous
roots. _Leaves:_ In a tuft from the base, long petioled, of 3 to 7
divisions cleft into numerous lobes; stem leaves nearly sessile,
distant, 3-parted.
_Preferred Habitat_--Meadows, fields, roadsides, grassy places.
_Flowering Season_--May-September.
_Distribution_--Naturalized from Europe in Canada and the United States;
most common North.
What youngster has not held these shining golden flowers under his chin
to test his fondness for butter? Dandelions and Marsh Marigolds may
reflect their color in his clear skin, too, but the buttercup is every
child’s favorite. When
“Cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,”
daisies, pink clover, and waving timothy bear them company here; not
the “daisies pied,” violets, and lady-smocks of Shakespeare’s England.
How incomparably beautiful are our own meadows in June! But the glitter
of the buttercup, which is as nothing to the glitter of a gold dollar in
the eyes of a practical farmer, fills him with wrath when this immigrant
takes possession of his pastures. Cattle will not eat the acrid, caustic
plant--a sufficient reason for most members of the _Ranunculaceae_ to
stoop to the low trick of secreting poisonous or bitter juices.
Self-preservation leads a cousin, the garden monk’s hood, even to
murderous practices. Since children will put everything within reach
into their mouths, they should be warned against biting the buttercup’s
stem and leaves, that are capable of raising blisters. “Beggars use the
juice to produce sores upon their skin,” says Mrs. Creevy. A designer
might employ these exquisitely formed leaves far more profitably.
By having its nourishment thriftily stored up underground all winter,
the Bulbous Buttercup _(R. bulbosus)_ is able to steal a march on its
fibrous-rooted sister that must accumulate hers all spring; consequently
it is first to flower, coming in early May, and lasting through June. It
is a low and generally more hairy plant, but closely resembling the tall
buttercup in most respects, and, like it, a naturalized European
immigrant now thoroughly at home in fields and roadsides in most
sections of the United States and Canada.
Commonest of the early buttercups is the Tufted species _(R.
fascicularis)_, a little plant seldom a foot high, found in the woods
and on rocky hillsides from Texas and Manitoba east to the Atlantic,
flowering in April or May. The long-stalked leaves are divided into
from three to five parts; the bright yellow flowers, with rather narrow,
distant petals, measure about an inch across. They open sparingly,
usually only one or two at a time on each plant, to favor pollination
from another one.
Scattered patches of the Swamp or Marsh Buttercup _(R. septentrionalis)_
brighten low, rich meadows also with their large satiny yellow flowers,
whose place in the botany even the untrained eye knows at sight. The
smooth, spreading plant sometimes takes root at the joints of its
branches and sends forth runners, but the stems mostly ascend. The large
lower mottled leaves are raised well out of the wet, or above the grass,
on long petioles. They have three divisions, each lobed and cleft. From
Georgia and Kentucky far northward this buttercup blooms from April to
July, opening only a few flowers at a time--a method which may make it
less showy, but more certain to secure cross-pollination between
distinct plants.