Yellow Marsh Marigold

Description

Caltha palustris, known as marsh-marigold and kingcup, is a small to medium size perennial herbaceous plant of the buttercup family, native to marshes, fens, ditches and wet woodland in temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. It flowers between April and August, dependent on altitude and latitude, but occasional flowers may occur at other times.Caltha palustris is a 10�80 cm high, hairless, fleshy, perennial, herbaceous plant, that dies down in autumn and overwinters with buds near the surface of the marshy soil. The plants have many, 2�3 mm thick strongly branching roots. Its flowering stems are hollow, erect or more or less decumbent. The alternate true leaves are in a rosette, each of which consist of a leaf stem that is about 4� as long as the kidney-shaped leaf blade, itself between 3�25 cm long and 3�20 cm wide, with a hart-shaped foot, a blunt tip, and a scalloped to toothed, sometime almost entire margin particularly towards the tip. In their youth the leaves are protected by a membranous sheath, that may be up to 3 cm long in fully grown plants.