Photographed April 17. Photographed April 17.Also known as Kidneyleaf Buttercup (from the shape of the basal leaves) or Little-Leaf Buttercup, this is the sort of spring flower we pass right by on our way to the more spectacular ones. A close look reveals a typical buttercup flower, but with very small petals, pale yellow or cream, on a little plant that is “slightly succulent” (as Gray puts it). This plant was growing near Saw Mill Run in Seldom Seen.
Gray describes the genus and the species, which he puts in the Euranunculus or Ranunculus-proper section of the vast genus Ranunculus.
RANÚNCULUS. CROWFOOT. BUTTERCUP. RECONCULE (Que.). Annuals or perennials; cauline leaves alternate. Flowers solitary or somewhat corymbed, yellow, rarely white. Petals plane or concave, often with a nectariferous spot or pit at base, mostly 5. (Sepals and petals rarely only 3, the latter often more than 5). Stamens mostly numerous, occasionally few. Large nearly worldwide group of herbs. — (A Latin name for a little frog; applied by Pliny to these plants, the aquatic species growing where frogs abound.)
EURANÚNCULUS Gray. Petals with a little scale at the base, yellow; achenes nerveless.
Achenes smooth, or nearly so; mostly perennial.
Terrestrial, but often in wet places; leaves mostly cleft or divided.
Root-leaves (or most of them) not divided to the very base; achenes marginless.
Carpels in an ovoid or cylindric head, on an elongated receptacle.
Stigma essentially sessile.
Most or all of the root-leaves merely crenate.
R. abortivus L. (SMALL-FLOWERED C.) Biennial, slightly succulent; stem 1.5–6 dm. high, covered with a short sparse sometimes fugacious pubescence; primary root-leaves round-heart-shaped with a wide shallow sinus or kidney-form, barely crenate, the succeeding often 3-lobed or 3-parted; those of the stem and branches 3-5-parted or divided, subsessile, the divisions oblong or narrowly wedge-form, mostly toothed; petals pale yellow, shorter than the small reflexed calyx; Carpel receptacle villous; carpels minute, merely mucronulate. — Shady hillsides and along brooks, common. Apr.-June.