LXXVII. — THE WATER CROWFOOT. 
Ranunculus Jioribundus Babington. 
T he considerable genus Ranunculus^ which gives its name to the Family 
Ranunculace^ and to the Order Ranales, comprises some two hundred and 
fifty species and is wellnigh cosmopolitan, occurring in Arctic and alpine situations 
both north and south and on mountains under the Equator, but more especially in 
the North Temperate Zone. They are herbaceous and mostly perennial and acrid. 
The leaves are generally much divided in a palmatisect manner ; and, as in all the 
Family, excepting Clematis^ the sepals, which are usually five in number, are 
imbricate. There are usually five petals and they each have a honey-secreting gland 
near the base. The stamens are indefinite in number, and, though when the flower 
first opens the anthers are turned inwards, the filaments of each whorl in succession 
twist so that their anthers burst outwards. As in the Tribe Anemone<£^ there are 
numerous indehiscent one-seeded carpels which form achenes ; but the genus differs 
from the other genera of that Tribe in having an erect or ascending, instead of a 
pendulous, ovule. 
The name Ranunculus is used by Pliny. It is certainly a diminutive of rana^ a 
frog ; but is variously explained as referring to the moist situations in which most of 
the species grow and where young frogs are to be found, or to the season of 
flowering when frogs are young. The most common English names for the group 
are Buttercup (applicable only to the golden-flowered species) and Crowfoot, referring 
to the usually divided leaves. 
There is a good deal to be said in favour of the division of the genus into three 
— Batrachium, Ficaria, and Eu-Ranunculus — though, as these all agree generally in 
the characters already mentioned, they may be treated merely as sub-genera. The 
Ranunculi, to which the Greek prefix ^«-, which we may render as “ strictly so-called,” 
is affixed, are terrestrial plants, with segmented leaves having little or no stipules, 
mostly yellow flowers, with five sepals, a scale covering the honey gland, and smooth, 
beaked achenes. De Candolle’s genus Ficaria has entire leaves, yellow flowers, 
generally three sepals, a scale over the honey gland, and unbeaked achenes. 
Batrachium, proposed as a genus by Samuel Frederic Gray in his “ Natural 
Arrangement of British Plants” (1821), (though the name was taken from the 
^arpay^LOV, batrachion of Dioscorides), consists of aquatic plants without the acridity 
of other Ranunculi ; with some or all of their leaves submerged and cut up into 
many narrow thread-like segments, but with distinct membranous stipules ; 
white petals with yellow bases and naked honey glands ; and achenes marked with 
transverse wrinkles. 
On account of the absence of acridity in these plants it has been suggested that 
they might be employed as fodder for pigs or cattle. 
