Last June, all my blog entries were about water-saving gardening. I’m going to carry on the tradition (if repeating something once can be called a tradition) and dedicate my June posts this year to garden practices that save water. To me, one of the most obvious ways of saving water is using plants who already know how to survive on the free water you’re already getting – your own beautiful natives.

I have a special fondness for this common wildflower, which I’ve know for many years. It’s the kind of feeling that prompted the Pilgrims to slip in a few flowers amongst their strictly utilitarian vegetable and herb seeds. They carried the comfort of their common dooryard and meadow flowers to this unknown land, flowers like heartsease (Viola tricolor) and dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis). These weren’t the big glamorous garden flowers of today; they were homely ambassadors of modest beauty: the field and hedge flowers of their native landscapes. These personal loves spoke through even all that Puritan guilt and utilitarian duty.

Ranunculus is a genus of about 600 species of plants in the Ranunculaceae. Members of the genus include the buttercups, spearworts, water crowfoots and the lesser celandine. List of species A. Species & Synonyms Common Names Native Range Illustration Ranunculus abaensis W.T.Wang. Ranunculus Asiaticus. Look for ranunculus tubers at your local garden center, and the gnarled claws.

That’s the way I feel about buttercups: they’re not conspicuous, or glamorous, or productive in any obvious way, but I love them. And, I have to say, I purely detest the large swollen ranunculus relatives in the bulb catalogues, swamped in their multiple folds.

For the first time in many years (I spend less time than I should lying in fields of buttercups these days) I took a close look at buttercups, just to see what I could see. And one thing I discovered made me realize how they might have been persuaded to become the bloated patriarchs of the catalogues. For one thing, color. Wild ranunculus often sports a gleaming white petal or two, which hints that it might be amenable to changing its color, if bred for it.

The second thing is petals. The buttercups in my neighborhood (Ranunculus occidentalis) usually have five sepals, and mostly have five petals – but there are a lot of exceptions.

It doesn’t take much looking to find a buttercup with more petals than five. There’s the occasional six-petal flower. There are the ones that splay out multiple petals (the highest count I got when I went out photographing was nine, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others with more). And there are the ones that stack them up in two layers, which looks to me like a prototype (if you have an evil-genius mind) to those big fold-on-fold-on-fold ranunculus in the catalogues.

When it comes to a discussion of buttercups, there’s an important issue that can’t be avoided: do you like butter? I have no idea where the custom of holding buttercups under people’s chins, to see the yellow reflection, came from. It’s one of those bits of myth that gets passed from child to child (for how long? “Ring around the rosy” comes from the Black Plague), but is seldom noticed by adults.

Maybe it’s an old health question: in winter, people didn’t get much in the way of fats, once the cows or goats went dry and the fall butchering was eaten. Maybe it was a way of checking to see if a person’s skin had enough oil to be healthy. I realize this is far-fetched, and I invite you to add your own theories, far-fetched or close at hand.

Of course I have to admit, I didn’t learn my butter-liking techniques from Ranunculus occidentalis (occidentalis means “west” in Latin). Though I am a native California, my parents transplanted me to New Jersey at a tender age. So the buttercup I learned to put under people’s chins, sometime early in elementary school, was Ranunculus abortivus L., the littleleaf buttercup native to New Jesey.

There is more than one kind of native buttercup, even in California. The white water buttercup (Ranunculus aquatilis) grows in ponds or small streams, as the name implies. Ranunculus californicus has some of the same range as R. occidentalis, but R. californicus has 9 to 16 petals as a standard, not a variation, and grows in moist places.

Whatever their type, wild buttercups can be replanted for years of pleasure. The easiest way to seed them, of course, is to leave them uncut until the seedpods mature and they seed themselves. You can also gather ripe seed from elsewhere, and scatter it nearby, acting as a part of nature (which is, after all, what we properly are). Of course you’ll want to be sure you’re harvesting only a small portion of seed from a good stand – you want the wild plants to flourish in their own chosen spot, as well as near you.

Where to plant them when you get the seeds home? My buttercups prefer moist water-meadows, but they will grow – for a briefer time – on the winter-rain-soaked dry upland meadows.

At least that’s true for Ranunculus occidentalis. Prairie buttercups (Ranunculus rhomboideus) like dry, well-drained soil. Other US species don’t seem to care if it’s moist or dry.

Wild Ranunculus Flowers

And that’s not the end of the likes and dislikes of various kinds of buttercups. In my search for buttercup identity, I came up with scads (a specialized botanical term) of species from all over the world; they seem to especially love very far north Eurasian lands like Finland and Russia. It’s likely that, if you live in a temperate region, there’s a wild buttercup near you, just suited to your climate and rainfall.

So it seems I’ve started this post trying to tell of a personal love, and wound up in global mystery. Love is like that. What are the homely plants that play a large part in your own inner landscape?

If you’re interested in more on natives, I’ve written up a lot of my own Northern California ones (just select the Wild Plants). Or try Lost in the Landscape for witty, informative, and beautifully-photographed posts on Southern California natives. For California natives in general, Las Pilitas will fill you in on a plethora of varieties, uses, and habitats – plus they sell the plants in question. And there’s always the California Native Plant Society.

Those of you in Texas might enjoy Conscious Gardening, which has a lot on natives and other ways to save water in the garden. If any readers have suggestions for other reliable native plant sites outside of California, I’d really like to know. Some of the New Jersey wildlings of my youth are also dear to me, and I’d love to know to get a refresher on what their natural environments are.

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Ranunculaceae
Plants of the Buttercup Family

Wild Ranunculus

The Buttercup family is like a window back in time. None of today's species were around 100 million years ago, but the Buttercups and other primitive groups like the Magnolias have retained the most ancestral characteristics over time. The Buttercups are considered very 'simple' because the floral parts-the petals, sepals, stamens and pistils-are all of an indefinite number and separate from one another. Also, the stamens and pistils are spirally inserted in a cone-like receptacle, although it is often very small to see. More advanced plant families have reduced, more specific numbers of floral parts, and the parts are often fused together.
The Buttercup family may be considered 'simple' from an evolutionary standpoint, but it includes some flowers that are highly complex in appearance, such as the delphinium and columbine. Yet these flowers are still considered 'simple' because all the parts are independently attached.
You may discover that the most common pattern of the family is the apparent lack of a pattern! Buttercups can have either regular or irregular flowers with anywhere from 3 to 15 sepals, often colored like petals, and 0 to 23 actual petals. There are often, but not always, numerous stamens and 3- to numerous simple pistils (apocarpous). The floral parts are all independently attached below a superior ovary. Most have bisexual flowers, except some species of meadow rue (Thalictrum) and Clematis. Worldwide, there are 35-70 genera in the Buttercup family and about 2,000 species. Twenty-three genera are found in North America.
For the purposes of identification, the most accurate pattern to look for is the multiple simple pistils at the center of the flower. In more advanced plant families there is typically only one pistil, the result of a reduction in numbers along with the fusion of several pistils to make a single compound pistil. A flower with multiple pistils is very likely a Buttercup, but could potentially be confused with species from the Rose subfamily of the Rose Family. A secondary pattern that is often easier to see, but not as consistent, is the hooked tips on the pistils. If you are not sure if you are looking at several separate pistils or some that are only partially fused together, then look for a hook at the tip of the pistil. Many species have hooked pistils, and the hooks often persist as the ovary matures after pollination.
The predominant property in the plants of the Buttercup family is an acrid protoanemonin glycoside oil. Most of the species are listed as poisonous, but most are safe to taste. The buttercup taste is biting and acrid, stronger in some plants than others. Taste it and spit it out. The acrid properties of the buttercups are unstable and are destroyed by drying or cooking, so the very mild buttercups are edible as salad greens or pot herbs. But be careful not to over do even these, as the residual acrid properties may cause a mild inflammation of the kidneys or liver. Mucilaginous plants can be ingested to counter-effect the acrid buttercups. Medicinally, the acrid nature of the plants makes them great for stimulating poultices, similar to a 'mustard plaster'. These poultices can be used on bruises, aches or arthritis to stimulate healing activity inside, but be careful, because the poultices can cause blistering if left in place too long. The poultice can even stimulate activity in cases of mild paralysis. The acrid quality is also beneficial for getting rid of lice. Goldenseal (Hydrastis) is a popular medicinal herb from this family. It is favored for the very bitter and highly antiseptic berberine alkaloid, also found in a few related genera and in the Barberry Family.
WARNING: A number of plants in this family, especially Aconitum and Delphinium contain concentrations of toxic terpenoid alkaloids. These alkaloids depress the central nervous system; they are often used for nervous disorders, antispasmodics and sedatives. Some of these plants can be cautiously used internally (by professionals only!) as heart and respiratory sedatives.

Wild Ranunculus Flowers

Key Words:Dicot flowers with three or more simple pistils, often with hooked tips.

Is Ranunculus Poisonous To Humans

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