Lesser Celandine
Ranunculus ficaria
The rich yellow flowers open with the Spring sunshine, often in such
great numbers that they carpet with gold a woodland floor or hedge-bank.
NAME
Before the introduction of the binomial system of naming plants, The
Lesser Celandine was known as Ranunculus
foliis cordatis angulatis petiolatis, which meant ' the Buttercup
with cordate (heart-shaped) leaves and angled petioles'. With the
Binomial system, the names became much shorter, before this time each
plant had as its name a short descriptive phase or sentence in Latin
which had to memorised in order to refer to a particular species accurately.
HABITAT
Very common in damp, shady places; woods, hedgerows, grassy places,
stream-banks
DESCRIPTION GENERAL
The heart-shaped leaves grow on long stalks. The solitary flowers
are more numerous than the Buttercup, bright golden yellow, sometimes
fading to white.
Type - perennial
Height - 50-250mm
Flowers - March-May
FLOWERS
single
at tip of stem, opening only on fine days
Colour - bright, glassy yellow, fading with age to nearly white at
the petal base.
Size - 20-30mm
Stalk - much longer than flower
Bracts - absent
Petals - 8-12, narrowly oval
Type - hermaphrodite
STEMS, LEAVES and ROOTS
Stem - angled upwards, base rooting
Leaves - from base and spirally arranged around
stem, 10-40mm, heart-shaped, blunt or rounded, edge shallowly toothed,
base notched
Hairs - absent
Stipules - absent
Leaf-stalk - base broad, overlapping other stalks
Root - fibrous, with many small swollen tubers. Some plants have tiny swollen buds called bulbils where the leaves join the stems, and all plants have small tubers through which they are able to last the Winter.
FLOWER
CLOSE UP
Stamens - numerous
Stigmas - 1 per ovary
Sepals - 3, oval
Ovary - numerous, 1, celled
FRUIT
Type - many in rounded head, not opening, egg-shaped to globular,
short beaked
Size - up to 2.5mm
Seeds - 1, not released