I. EANUNCULACEiE. 



11 



1. Water Ranunculus. Ranunculus aquatilis, Linn. (Fig. 9.) 



A most variable species, but easily 

 known by its stem either floating in 

 water or creeping along mud, by its 

 white flowers, and very small ovoid car- 

 pels marked with transverse wrinkles. 

 It is glabrous in all its parts, excepting 

 sometimes the carpels and their recep- 

 tacle. The lower leaves and sometimes 

 all, remaining under water, are divided 

 into numerous very fine linear segments, 

 whilst those which spread on the surface 

 are rounded and more or less cut into 3 H *£• 



or 5 wedge-shaped, obovate, or rounded lobes. Flower-stalks axillary 

 and 1-flowered. Petals 5 or sometimes more, without any scale over 

 the spot at their base. 



Tn ponds, streams, and wet ditches throughout Europe and Russian 

 Asia, North America, and Australia. Abundant in Britain. Fl. the 

 whole season. Many of the forms it assumes are striking, and have 

 been distinguished as species, but the characters, although often to a 

 certain degree permanent, appear at other times so inconstant, and 

 even to depend so much on the situation the plant grows in, that we 

 can only consider them as mere varieties. The following are the most 

 prominent. 



a. Floating water B. (Eng. Bot. Suppl. t. 2870.) All the leaves sub- 

 merged and finely cut, the segments long and parallel. Flowers large, 

 on long stalks. — Chiefly in running streams. 



b. Capillary water B. (Eng. Bot. Suppl. t. 2869.) All the leaves 

 submerged and finely cut, but with shorter segments spreading in every 

 direction. Flowers large. — Chiefly in deep still waters. 



c. Common water B. (Eng. Bot. t. 101.) Lower leaves submerged 

 and finely cut ; upper leaves floating, rounded and broadly lobed. 

 Flowers very variable in size. — The commonest state of the plant, pass- 

 ing into all the other varieties. 



2. Ivy Ranunculus. Ranunculus hederaceus, Linn. (Fig. 10.) 



(Eng. Bot. t. 2003.) 



Yery closely allied to the water B., and probably, as given in the 

 first edition of the ' Handbook,' a variety of that species, but as in our 

 own country, at least, it is very constant, and the question of its origin 

 admits of considerable doubt, I here admit it in deference to the opinion 

 of others. It never appears to produce the finely cut leaves of the 

 water B., but, creeping on mud or floating in shallow water, it roots 



