Glacier buttercup

Description

Ranunculus glacialis, the glacier buttercup or glacier crowfoot, is a plant of the family Ranunculaceae. It is a 5-10(-20) cm high perennial herb. Often with a single relatively large (1.8 - 3.8 cm) flower, with 5 petals first white later pink or reddish. The underside of the 5 sepals are densely brown-hairy. The leaves are fleshy, shiny, and deeply loped, forming 3 leaflets. Ranunculus glacialis reported (from Greenland material) to have a diploid chromosome number of 2n = 16. Ranunculus glacialis is an Arctic–alpine species, found in the high mountains of southern Europe (Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, Sierra Nevada) as well as on the Scandinavian peninsula, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Jan Mayen, Svalbard, eastern Greenland and Finland, where is endangered and protected. It has been described as being one of the highest-ascending plant in the Alps, flowering at over 4,000 m. It is found in fell-field and snow-bed sites, on edges of meltwater streams. Ranunculus glaberrimus is a herbaceous perennial plant growing to 4–15 centimetres (1+1⁄2–6 in) tall. The roots are clustered and fleshy. The somewhat thick basal leaves are oval, with long petioles, ranging from entire to having three deep lobes. Cauline leaves have short petioles but are otherwise similar. The flowers have four to ten yellow petals (usually five) about 1 cm long. The sepals are yellow-purple, and the stamens and pistils are numerous. The species is reportedly toxic to livestock and possibly to humans as well. Ranunculus is a large genus of about 600 species of flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae. Members of the genus are known as buttercups, spearworts and water crowfoots. The familiar and widespread buttercup of gardens throughout Northern Europe (and introduced elsewhere) is the creeping buttercup Ranunculus repens, which has extremely tough and tenacious roots. Two other species are also widespread, the bulbous buttercup Ranunculus bulbosus and the much taller meadow buttercup Ranunculus acris. In ornamental gardens, all three are often regarded as weeds. Buttercups usually flower in the spring, but flowers may be found throughout the summer, especially where the plants are growing as opportunistic colonizers, as in the case of garden weeds. The water crowfoots (Ranunculus subgenus Batrachium), which grow in still or running water, are sometimes treated in a separate genus Batrachium (from Greek βάτραχος bátrakhos, "frog").