California Buttercup
California Buttercup
Ranunculus californicus
(Photos copyright Brother Alfred Brousseau, F.S.C. )
The California Buttercup,
Ranunculus californicus,
is one of the most common of our spring flowers.
Buttercups like grassy slopes that are consistently wet in spring.
Our best displays can usually be found between the chairs and the
park, shortly after you begin heading down hill. One of the first
spring flowers, with blooms as early as mid February, lasting into
May. The leaves have a lot of structure, and are easy to recognize
well before the flowers come. This Buttercup has 7-22 lemon-yellow
petals forming a little cup.
Maybe they should be called Lemoncups!
The latin name,
Ranunculus,
means "little frog", because you can often find frogs, or tadpoles at
least, nearby (its true!). Indians boiled the roots (like potatoes)
and roasted the seeds (like popcorn). The raw seeds are poisonous.
The Indians also extracted yellow dye from the flowers. Western
settlers pickled the young flowers. The cultivated
Ranunculus is a
wonderful garden flower around here--easy to grow from seedling or
corm. Plant them in October for
rose-like blooms in March.
