RANUNCULUS. 



In the va easy and as lovable as all the rest, in the same 



situat 



/,'. eticue is a handsome golden buttercup of the field-persuasion, 

 a foot high, with soft foliage and brilliant blossom. 



B. cupraeus is a most exquisite treasure, with fern-fine frail foliage 

 like that of some tender alpine poppy, and then dainty and almost 

 naked little thready stems of 2 or 3 inches, each carrying one large 

 flower which continues copying the poppies, at the price of departing 

 from all the family traditions, in being of a hot coppery orange. 

 Want at present, however, must long remain our master in this 

 matter ; B. cupraeus, in the whole world, inhabits only the highest 

 rocks of Lassiti in Eastern Crete. 



B. demissus, from Greece and Asia Minor (with a variety B. d. 

 lull nicus) and again in the Sierra Nevada {B. hispanicus is spindlier), 

 has fine foliage on fine stems from the crown, and golden big flowers 

 that sometimes seem specially large when the whole plant is only 

 an inch or two high instead of its usual four or five. 



B. Enysii is a large New Zealander of small use or merit. 



J?, eximius lives in the high places of the central Rockies. It has 

 only one fan-vaned leaf, or very few at the most ; and the dwarf stems 

 carry great golden stars an inch and a half across. 



E. fi hrllatus {B. chaeropihyllos) is worth a hot, dry place in the sun. 

 It is an extremely rare native that used to occur in Jersey, the rest 

 of it reaching the Levant. It is like a minute and hairy B. bvlbosus, 

 with the finely feathered and claw-cut leaves all at the base of the 

 stems, that thicken to a sort of bulb at the bottom. The flowers are 

 borne on the usually unbranching stem of 6 or 9 inches, and are 

 very bold, upstanding, and large, of shining glorious gold. 



B. geraniifolius is a form of B. montanus. 



B. glacialis, sometimes calling itself Oxygraphis glacialis, has a 

 most curious distribution. It clothes the whole of the European 

 Arctic North, descends all down Western Norway, and so across 

 Iceland to the far coasts of Greenland. But it will not set foot either 

 in Arctic Asia or Arctic America, and, unlike most other xArctic types 

 (which, if they put up with the conditions at all, put up with all of 

 them), never descends at home from its high places on to the level of 

 shore or tundra. And the same trait may be noticed when B. glacialis 

 os again in Southern Europe, where, after having ceased for so long, 

 it suddenly erupts upon the Alps into amazing vigour, and occupies 

 all the gaunt granitic, porphyry and schistose screes, shingles, moraines, 

 and so forth, in the highest alpine zone, especially abundant in the 

 damp npmosl hollows where the mountain flanks are brought to bed 



210 



