Yellow flowers above hairy three-lobed leaves, spreading across damp grass and flowerbeds by long rooting runners that peg it to the ground
Creeping buttercup, Ranunculus repens.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Creeping buttercup
Native · flowers Apr–Aug · lawns, damp pasture, verges and gardens
Ranunculus repens — Ranunculaceae
The buttercup that turns up in lawns, flowerbeds and wet fields, spreading by long rooting runners that peg it down into a creeping mat. Plantlife calls it widespread and stable, and it is the one most gardeners meet as a weed. It is the easiest of the three common buttercups to tell, by its runners and its hairy, three-lobed leaves.
How to spot them
- ▸Long, leafy runners that root at the nodes and spread across the ground, forming a dense mat
- ▸Hairy leaves divided into three lobes, each lobe further cut
- ▸Glossy yellow flowers on furrowed, ridged stalks; the sepals lie flat against the petals
- ▸Favours damp, heavy or compacted ground: wet meadows, lawns, tracks, path edges and roadside verges
- ▸Compare meadow buttercup (tall, no runners) and bulbous buttercup (swollen base, sepals bent back, flowers earlier)
How to know it
Its specific epithet is Latin for 'crawling', describing the stolons that root at every node
Ranunculus repens — creeping buttercup.
Among common yellow lawn weeds, look under the petals: the small green sepals lie flat against the flower rather than bending sharply back
Creeping buttercup. Bulbous buttercup's sepals curl away from the flower (Plantlife).
Generations of children have held it beneath the chin; a yellow glow was said to prove that the child liked butter
Creeping buttercup — Plantlife notes the name may come from a belief that it coloured butter.
This lawn and wet-field yellow flower forms mats on heavy, waterlogged soil, unlike its tall, upright meadow cousin
Creeping buttercup.
Plantlife lists it as widespread and stable, and it is by far the likeliest of the yellow Ranunculus species to pop up in a garden lawn
Creeping buttercup.
Quick-fire facts
- •Family Ranunculaceae; the epithet repens means 'creeping'
- •Plantlife gives a flowering season of April to August, and describes it as widespread and stable across the British Isles
- •It spreads by rooting runners (stolons) as well as by seed, which makes it hard to weed out of lawns and beds
- •It thrives on damp, heavy, poorly drained soils
- •Like other buttercups, the fresh sap contains the irritant protoanemonin, so grazing animals generally avoid it
- •Identification tip: meadow buttercup lacks runners, bulbous buttercup has a swollen corm-like base and reflexed sepals, and creeping buttercup has runners
- •The buttercup name is thought to come from the belief that the flowers made butter golden; the chin-glow game is a folk test
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Sources
- Plantlife — Creeping Buttercup (Ranunculus repens)
- Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust — Meadow buttercup