RANUNCULUS. 



R. Buchanani is a New Zealander, erect and sturdy, with the 

 handsome foliage kidney-shaped and then cut into three lobes to the 

 base, the middle one often having a short foot-stalk of its own. 

 The blossoms are large and white, most abundantly furnished with 

 petals. It should have the treatment of R. Lyallii, and is about a 

 foot in height. 



R. biillatus lives in damp, shady, sandy places among the Olives from 

 Spain to Asia Minor, with a rosette of leaves at the base, blistered and 

 coarsely double-scalloped, while from the crown spring many naked 

 stems of 6 inches or so, each carrying one large golden flower. 



R. bupleuroeides is a form of R. pyrenaeus, confined to the 

 Pyrenees, and differing in the greater length of fine stem that carries 

 the much broader, long-pointed oval of the leaf, which in true R. 

 pyrenaeus seems to have no foot-stalks at all as a rule, so do they 

 taper narrowly downwards. Here they diminish quite suddenly 

 from their amplitude, and tho whole plant is more delicate and thin 

 in effect. 



R. carinthiacus is a sub-species or only a mere form of the variable 

 R. montanus, slender in habit and with the foliage much more freely, 

 profoundly, and narrowly claw-cut, the stems more slender, and the 

 bright golden flowers not so large. It has no special claim, any more 

 than have two other golden mountaineers, R. carpathicus and R. 

 Caucasians, all this section having little look of their high station, 

 but seeming rather stunted field-buttercups out of place. 



R. Chamissonis, from Eastern Siberia, is quite close to R. glacialis, 

 having only one flower to the stem and a hairy calyx. 



R. cortusaefolius is a gigantic 2-foot golden buttercup (flowering 

 in July) with handsome foliage. It comes from the Canaries and is of 

 no long-enduring hardiness, though worth attempting in a hot and 

 specially well-drained corner in light soil. 



R. crenatus has much the look and habit of R. bilobus, but here 

 the leaves are only rounded to the stem, and not bi-lobed at the base. 

 They are also of limper texture, dull dark green, and with the scallops 

 much deeper and definitely pointed instead of rounded. The stems, 

 too, are a little stouter and stockier, though the great white flowers are 

 quite as beautiful, and even more amply furnished in effect, as the 

 petals are not so deeply notched. It likes the same places as the other 

 white alpine buttercups, but resolutely avoids the limestone, instead 

 of seeking it. It has only one district in Central Europe, in the chain 

 of the Bosenstein in Styria, after which it occupies four or five quite 

 small mountain tracts, widely isolated, and far away from each other 

 as from the last, in Bosnia, Servia, Transylvania and Macedonia. 

 (i,096) 209 n.— o 



