RANUNCULUS. 



stems are about 9 inches or a foot high, carrying from one to four 

 ample golden Bowers about 2 inches acr< 



R. ruUiffolius = Callianthemum cor iandri folium, q.v. 



R. BCutatua ifl a taller and larger variety of ugly R. Thorn, with 

 largi r. though still mean, yellow stars by twos and threes at the top 

 of a 9-inch or foot -high stem, leafless from the base, but with one or 

 two enormous and very broadly-rounded, tooth-edged leaves sitting 

 to the stems about half-way up, lobed deeply into a depression in 

 their upper edge, with a point or so sticking forward in the middle, 

 this depression being its distinction from R. Thorn, which merely 

 has the outer edge of the leaves comparatively larger and rounder, 

 and roundlier-scalloped (as if it were blunted and nibbled), where 

 the point should be, with only perhaps a shallow flattish tooth or 

 two here and there. 



R. Seguieri is the least known of the white high-alpine Buttercups, 

 and yet quite as beautiful and easy as the best. It is the limestone 

 counterpart of R. glocidlis, occupying the stony screes of the calcareous 

 ranges, though not ascending to elevations quite so austere, and with 

 a most curious distribution, for, while its main area lies from Dauphine 

 down into the Maritime Alps, it also has an outbreak in the Abruzzi, 

 and yet again, across Lombardy, another, where it is generally common 

 in the higher limestone silts and screes of the Dolomites on the Italian 

 frontier-ranges and on both sides of the Fassa Thai. It is a specially 

 lovely thing, forming, unlike the others, widely ramifying masses from 

 tough roots that spread underground, and send up tufts of very fine and 

 ferny green smooth foliage, delicate and strange in effect, suggesting 

 a much smaller, frailer, paler-green Anemone baldensis, with profusion 

 of round-faced, milk-white flowers on stems of 3 inches or so from each 

 clump. It is a perfectly easy and delightful species for the limestone bed 

 or moraine; so intensely calcareous is it, and so intensely anti-calcareous 

 R. glacialis, that it is curious to note their rare contacts. For instance, 

 on the Passo delle Selle, at the summit, there is a strip of limestone 

 silt about three yards wide ; this is filled with R. Seguieri. But the 

 strip of lime is a thin channel between broad continents of red porphyry 

 and syenite on either hand ; these are occupied by waving jungles of 

 /,'. ijhiridjis. Yet as << east is east and west is west, and never the 

 twain shall meet," so here the two buttercups never trespass by a 

 hair's-bnadih on each other's ground, but keep separate houses like 

 Montague and Capulet, eyeing each other jealously over the wall, 

 though they do produced a Romeo and Juliet 



to overleap 'lie- borders and reconcile the families and blend their 

 Nfor, on the Forcella Lungieres, where it abounds in the silt- 

 218 



