CREEPING BUTTERCUP FLOWER SPECIES PATCH

The cultivated version of the Ranunculus acris is R acris 'Flore Pleno' ('Bachelor's buttons') which is double multi-petalled. I have just read that wood ash will curb it, so wood ash is what it is going to get in our spring garden.īut there is no need to be wary of most other types of buttercup. The lesser celandine has the odd habit of its leaves dying back after flowering, deceiving the gardener into believing it has gone away while it is merely coiled for further invasion in late winter.

Neither are compatible with border planting. While it is a joy in a damp wood, for the gardener it is a weed as intrusive and difficult to be rid of as another woodland delight, the bluebell. I am already invaded by Ranunculus ficaria, the lesser celandine, which has tiny kidney-shaped leaves beneath its golden flowers. But it will cross with the single-flowering weed, so it needs to be well clear of it, or else you could find yourself invaded.

CREEPING BUTTERCUP FLOWER SPECIES PATCH

However, if you are brave and have a fundamentally dry garden with a damp patch of grass, you could try growing R repens 'Pleniflorus', which is taller and has flowers with a double row of petals flowering between now and mid-July. It has roots that grip hard to the roots of other precious plants, and only by tucking your fingers right under the base of the plants and pulling hard will it come away to reveal its distinctive trailing tentacles of white roots.

We also have the creeping buttercup, Ranunculus repens, which is threatening to become a seriously intrusive weed into the increasingly wet soil. This is why they are so common in the long grass of orchards and are dominant in carefully contrived garden 'wildflower meadows'. Their common name hints at their survival pattern - they are a plant of hay meadows and adapt well to the annual cycle of cutting in midsummer, but are easily grazed out of existence. Feet measure the length of my shoes and metres are Linnaean in their rational abstraction). They like a damp soil in grassland, their branched stems growing 3-4ft tall (I should say a metre, but I can't make any reality out of it. The obvious orchard buttercups are Ranunculus acris, the meadow buttercup - the one that we have all held under our chin to see if the reflection proves whether we like butter or not.

Creeping buttercup flower species