108 



CELERY-LEAVED CROW -FOOT. Ranunculus sceleratus. 



Plate S,fiy.4. 

 Leaves smooth, three-lobed. Calyx smooth, spreading out. 



A juicy, erect, beautiful plant, growing in ditches and muddy 

 places, smooth all over except the stem, which is slightly hairy, 

 about one foot high, and hollow. The root leaves are very 

 glossy, roundish, kidney-shaped, in three cut lobes, upon long 

 stalks stem leaves, (as they are mostly in the other species,) 

 narrower, more deeply cut, and nearly sessile. Petals very 

 small. Seeds very numerous, collected in an oblong head, 

 quite smooth, and which head is always to be seen as a green 

 body in the middle of the small yellow flowers. 



The Latin name signifies the Wicked Ranunculus ; its juice 

 is very inflaming or acrid, and when rubbed upon the skin oc- 

 casions it to look red and blistered. The begging impostors, 

 who used once to sit in the streets, or crawl along the highways, 

 to excite compassion by their apparently- ulcerated limbs, em- 

 ployed this plant to produce the effect. I once saw a mendicant 

 using it ; he told me it was applied as a remedy for a wound he 

 had received. I was then a child, but the slight knowledge of 

 botany I had acquired enabled me to detect an impostor and a 

 hypocrite. 



UPRIGHT MEADOW CROW-FOOT. Ranunculus acris. 



Plate 8, Jig. 5. 

 Leaves hairy, three-lobed. Calyx hairy, upright. Stem upright. 



Root fibrous. Stem upright, hairy, one or two feet high, hol- 

 low, and round all the way up. Leaves hairy, three-lobed, 

 each lobe in three smaller lobes, and each of these cleft or 

 toothed stem leaves not so much divided. Calyx hairy, up- 

 right, or almost spreading, and not bent downwards. This is 

 so much like the bulbous-rooted Crow-foot that they are both 

 called by the name of Buttercup, and so is also the next species, 

 which is equally common. It is acrid in qualities, like the 

 others. 



