40 THE STORY ‘OF, PLANT LIFE 
posed to shelter under them. Naturally, too, it was 
consecrated to Venus. 
WATER BUTTERCUP. 
There are a great number of so-called batrachian 
Ranunculi or Buttercups, which are found in water 
growing entirely submerged or floating on the surface. 
They may be found in almost every pond or river 
or ditch. 
A few of these grow on mud in shallow water and 
have almost entire leaves with few lobes, such as the 
Ivy-leaved Water Crowfoot, and there is another, 
the celery-leaved Water Crowfoot, which grows at 
the sides of ponds, with erect stems and leaves and 
a well-developed root-stock. 
These are some of the transitional types which 
unite the water buttercups with the land forms. 
In the truly aquatic water buttercups the leaves 
are of two kinds, the one floating, flat, lobed, shining, 
divided into wedge-like divisions; the others linear, 
finely divided, hair-like. These are usually sub- 
merged. Doubtless originally they were like the 
floating leaves, unless the former are derived from 
the latter. They have become adapted to life in the 
water, and are thus divided to enable the plant to 
present a greater area of surface, by sub-division, 
to the watery element and to the light, in order to 
obtain an adequate supply of the necessary food- 
materials. 
This streaming habit is, moreover, characteristic 
