158 RANUNCULACEAE (CROWFOOT FAMILY) 
Range: Throughout the Uftited States and southern Canada, but 
most abundant in the eastern part. 
Habitat: Meadows, pastures, roadsides, and waste places. 
The range of this weed has of‘late years greatly increased, mostly 
by the agency of baled hay. It is one of the most acrid of its tribe, 
the juices causing blisters when applied to the skin, and cattle can- 
not eat it in the green state; but drying seems to deprive it of 
this dangerous quality, and therefore less 
strenuous endeavor is made for its extermi- 
nation than is deserved by so noxious a 
weed. 
The bulbous base of this plant is well 
fringed with long, fibrous, feeding roots. 
Several stems usually grow from the same 
root-tuft, six to eighteen inches high, erect, 
slender, more or less branched, grooved and 
hairy. Lower leaves long-petioled, three- 
parted, with the segments again usually 
three-cleft, sharply toothed, the terminal 
segment having a somewhat lengthened 
stalk. Stem-leaves much smaller, less di- 
vided and sessile. Flowers bright yellow, 
so lustrous that they reflect light, about 
an inch broad, the petals much longer than 
Fie. 108.—Bulbous the hairy, reflexed sepals; the blossoms 
Buttercup (Ranunculus 
bulbosus). xX. are often partly double, the peduncles slen- 
der and grooved. Head globose, contain- 
ing many small flattened, short-beaked carpels, so nearly of 
the size and weight of grass seeds that they are very difficult of 
separation. (Fig. 108.) 
Means of control . 
Hand-digging will pay if the infestation is new and the plants 
not so numerous as to make the task impracticable; but it is worth 
considerable trouble to save a plot from being fouled by the seeds. 
Ground too rankly infested to be so cleansed should be broken up, 
put to cultivated crops, and be given thorough tillage for one or 
two seasons. 
