62 The Romance of Wild Flowers 
hogweed, fool’s-parsley, and other broad-leaved plants, 
which threatened to suffocate the little Celandine, 
and prevent it getting the materials necessary for 
flower production. Three courses were open to it if 
it was not to be snuffed out,—it must change its 
habitat, grow a tall tough stalk, as the Meadow 
Buttercup has done, that its flowers might flourish 
above the crowd, or it must change its flowering 
season. 
The annual Celandine adopted the last course, and 
in so doing became a perennial. Its seedlings were 
no longer to labour to flower during their first season ; 
they were to work and save all they could, packing 
it into those root-swellings. Then the second year 
the young plant started with a full exchequer, and 
could afford to spend its substance in a floral display 
as soon as winter had passed, and before its com- 
petitors for place had time to develop their leaves. 
The earliest insects fertilised its seed-eggs, which 
were fed by the ample stores below, and the plant 
had still time to enlarge its leaves and let them make 
abundant food before the summer fully set in with 
its overcrowding. Then it scattered its seeds, drained 
its leaves and stems of all their wealth, and packed it 
into the underground treasury in readiness for the 
new year’s expenditure. 
There are several species of Ranunculus that are 
popularly lumped together under the name of Butter- 
cup. They are of taller growth than the Celandine, 
have larger leaves, deeply lobed and cut at the edges, 
the whole plant more or less hairy, and the petals 
broader, so that the flower forms a golden cup instead 
of a star. The Celandine grows chiefly under the 
