Photographed May 12.Photographed May 12.Also known as Hooked Crowfoot, this is another small and easily ignored species of buttercup. The plants favor moist woodlands, frequently in fairly dim light; they often form colonies along forest paths. This plant was growing in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon.
Gray describes the genus and the species, which he puts in the Euranunculus or Ranunculus-proper section of the vast genus Ranunculus.
RANUNCULUS. 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.
Leaves variously cleft or divided; achenes in globular or ovoid heads, compressed, with an evident firm margin; hirsute or pubescent.
Achenes with long recurved beak; root-leaves rarely divided.
R. recurvatus Poir. (HOOKED C.) Hirsute, 3-6 dm. high; leaves of the root and stem nearly alike, long-petioled, deeply 3-cleft, large; the lobes broadly wedge-shaped, 2-3-cleft, cut and toothed toward the apex; petals shorter than the reflexed calyx, pale. — Woods, common. May, June.