Bulbous buttercup
Ranunculus bulbosus
Family · Ranunculaceae · Poisonous
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This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
The buttercup of dry meadows, told apart by two things: the sepals fold down against the flower stalk, and the stem base swells into a bulb the size of a small turnip.
Fields and pasture · Uplands · Roadsides and waste ground
Also known asSt Anthony's turnip, bulbous crowfoot
How to tell it
Bright yellow varnished flowers, two to three centimetres. The sepals are folded down and pressed to the stalk, which no other common buttercup does and settles identification in a second. The stem base, right at soil level, is a round white bulb. Leaves divided into three stalked leaflets.
What it is confused with
Creeping buttercup
Ranunculus repens
Look at the sepals behind the flower: folded down on the bulbous one, pressed to the petals on the creeping one. And the creeping one spreads by runners on damp soil, the bulbous one stays in a tuft in dry meadow. Both irritate skin.
What it is for
None
It is among the buttercups richest in protoanemonin in Europe: the fresh sap raises blisters on skin within minutes, and the bulb was used by beggars to create visible sores. It is neither tasted nor crushed against skin.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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