April 



Swamps, hillsides 



SWAMP BUTTERCUP 



Ranunculus septentrionalis Poir. 



The buttercups are a contradictory tribe. They 

 may be brilliant gold with a sheen like gold leaf, 

 or they may be dull and greenish and small, and 

 quite unbeautiful in the springtime of the year. Two of the most orna- 

 mental of the buttercups are these — the swamp buttercup of the wet 

 places, and the early crowfoot {Banuncidus fascicularis) which blooms 

 at about the same time or a little earlier, Init chooses clay hillsides as its 

 native haunt. 



They have compound leaves and five-petaled. glistening gold flowers 

 with tufted golden centers which sparkle in the April sun. The butter- 

 cups start out as neat and compact plants with many short stems and 

 leaves springing in a tuft from the filn-ous root. But wlien April is almost 

 over and still the buttercups put forth bloom, the plants send out runners 

 with new plants on the ends. Outward they stretch and take root wherever 

 they find a place to stop and send in their white little roots. No wonder 

 the buttercups spread themselves so thoroughly and so Inilliantly when 

 April comes. ^Yith their abundant seeds and their spreading runners, they 

 have two means Ijy wliich they increase themselves. The swamp buttercup 

 is the more proliiic of the two, lias loundcr. laigiM-. brighter flowers than 

 the early crowfoot. The latter has a more compact plant and nnich more 

 deeply cut and more compact leaves, and star-shaped flowers with narrow, 

 pale yellow petals. There on the sunny hillside under the oaks the early 

 crowfoot blooms, while down iu the marshy place near the pond the 

 ground is golden with swamp buttercups. To ])otli flit the little silvery 

 blue butterflies and the earliest ])co!i of spring. 



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