RANUNCULUS. 



R. anemonifoliua is a high-alpine from Armenia, of half a foot 01 

 more, with handsome foliage and largo golden blossoms. 



R. angustifolius is a Pvrenean species, best to be described as a 

 close cousin of R. pyrenaeus, but rather smaller, with foliage more 

 narrow and grassy still, while the white flowers tend not to be so 

 large. It has, however, a really charming sub-species, R. alismoeides, 

 a plant confined to the alpine fields of the Sierra Nevada, much dwarfer, 

 with stems of 2 or 3 inches at the most, each carrying only one much 

 ampler white flower. The leaves are all at the base, rather broad and 

 tap ring to a long point, in all about an inch in length, and only a 

 few of them, spreading out upon the grass. 



R. arizonicus, from the Rockies, is golden, but only about 8 

 inches high. 



R. asiaticus. — Except in warm, dry gardens of the South, in light, 

 warm soil, England is but a cold stepmother to the blazing single 

 scarlet buttercup of the Levant, like a royal Anemone ; and the double 

 forms have no place in the rock-garden. 



R. bilobus has the habit and the tastes of R. alpester, but is 

 confined entirely to a small limestone district in South Tyrol, in the 

 mountains round the head of Garda, and away towards Venetia, where 

 it haunts the cooler, shadier shingle-slopes, and there makes clumps of 

 rich beauty, as in certain places on the Cima Tombea. It may easily 

 be told from R. alpester by its leaves, which are perfectly round and 

 uncloven in outline, fatly roundly scalloped along their kidney-shaped 

 contour. In cultivation the plant is no less easy and delightful than 

 its cousin, with the more abundant petals more deeply notched, so 

 that, while R. alpester (at its best), holds up solid saucers of whiteness, 

 the flowers of R. bilobus are more like the most exquisite of wee and 

 pure-white dog-roses above the tufts of lucent green foliage, dark as 

 night, which are evergreen instead of dying down in the winter as in 

 R. alpester. It lias sometimes been sent out by misguided ones 

 (myself included), as R. crenatus, a distinct and separate species of 

 wholly different tastes and distribution, q.v. 



R. brevifolius (R. Pythora, Crantz) is a rather ugly yellow 

 Buttercup from the Abruzzi and Asia Minor, etc., where, in the high 

 limestone screes, it forms a sub-species of R. Phthora, with small 

 glaucous-grey leaves on longish thin stems, and very much broader 

 than they are long (as if they had been squashed-to, like a concertina), 

 and with three or five deep lobes along their outer edge. There is one 

 of these leaves on each 3-inch stem, that each supports a single little 

 flower of shrill yellow ; but here the lobes are deeper and much more 

 pointed and less ample in outline than in those at the base. 



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