LXXIX.— THE GREATER SPEARWORT. 
Ranunculus Lingua Linne. 
T his handsome plant, the largest of our British species of Ranunculus^ is not 
common, although it is pretty generally distributed throughout Britain. Thus, 
out of the 1 12 counties and vice-counties of approximately equal size into which 
Hewett Watson divided our island, and those more immediately adjoining it, this 
species has been recorded in seventy-seven, whereas fifty is, perhaps, an average 
number. It occurs over northern and western Asia, down to the Himalaya, and 
throughout Temperate Europe ; but is not recorded from Scotland north of 
Aberdeen, and is only local in its occurrence in Ireland. It grows in ditches and 
marshes, and in the Norfolk Broads is characteristic of the outer or “ free water 
side ” of the shallow-water Reed-swamp association of the ecologists, where it 
is accompanied by PhragmiteSy the large Willow-herb {Epilohium hirsutum L.), the 
Forget-me-not, Bittersweet, Yellow Iris, Branched Bur-reed, Great Water Dock 
{Rumex Hydrolapathum Hudson), and Bulrush (Typha). 
It belongs, as do the two following species, to a Section or Sub-genus known as 
Eu-ranunculus, mostly perennial plants with leaves generally radical and exstipulate, the 
parts of the flower in fives, the petals yellow, and the achenes destitute of tubercles 
on their surface. Wdthin this Section, the Spearworts are distinguished by their 
undivided leaves, of which the upper ones are lanceolate. The Lesser Spearwort 
{R. Flammula Linne) is much commoner than R. Lingua and in every way smaller ; 
but large-flowered forms of the former, in which the blossoms reach three-quarters 
of an inch in diameter, are sometimes mistaken for the other species. R. Flammula is 
a very variable plant ; but It always has furrowed flower-stalks and inflated short- 
beaked carpels, whereas R. Lingua has its flower-stalks free from furrows and a 
broad, strong, sword-shaped beak to its achenes. 
A dense mass of fibrous roots adapt the plant to its situation in mud not often 
much disturbed by wind or currents ; and, in addition to this tuft of roots at the base 
of the stem, others are often put out by the lower joints of the stem which may 
assume a more or less prostrate or ascending position. 
The stem generally rises erect to a height of two or three feet and is stout and 
hollow. Both it and the upper aerial leaves that it bears may be either glabrous or 
densely covered with stiff adpressed hairs, though this hairiness and the presence of 
markedly distinct submerged leaves have been often overlooked by botanists when 
describing the plant. Thus Gerard speaks only of “ long smooth leaves not unlike 
those of the Willow,” though his editor Johnson says “ leaves a little hairy.” 
Linnaeus briefly characterises the leaves as lanceolate ; Lamarck and De Candolle in the 
“ Flore Fran9aise ” (1805) add that they are amplexicaul, i.e. sessile and more or less 
wrapped round the stem at the base ; and Gray’s “ Natural Arrangement of British 
Plants” (1821) seems to be the first work to note the few slight teeth along their 
