FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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By Bob Young This is the fourth of a series of articles describing the flowers pictured in our wildflower brochure. — ed.
California Buttercup is shown in the brochure "Common Native Wildflowers of Edgewood," published jointly by the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the California Native Plant Society and Friends of Edgewood Natural Preserve. This buttercup is also common from southwest Oregon to Baja California and into the Sierra Nevada foothills. The scientific name for the California Buttercup is Ranunculus californicus (pronounced ruh-NUN-kyoo-luhs cal-ih-FOR-nih-cus). This full name was given by botanist George Bentham in 1848. Pliny the Elder gave the original name of the buttercup, ranunculus, in the early part of the first century. In Latin, ran means frog and cul and uncul denote little. Therefore, since the buttercup likes wet places, much like the habitat of frogs, the name ranunculus is fitting. The Spanish word for frog is rana. The buttercup is in the Buttercup Family. It is a perennial, coming back each year from the old roots. Some other members of this family are larkspur and columbine. Another name for the family is Crowfoot Family, a name based on the shape of the deeply divided leaves. On Edgewood, our buttercup blooms with glossy yellow blossoms from February to May, generally in non-serpentine grassland. It grows in both sunny and moderately shaded areas. The flowers are about an inch across, with from seven to twenty-two petals. The flower stems are from seven inches to two feet tall. In Flowers of Coast and Sierra (1928), Edith S. Clements, Ph.D., gives a "fairy-lore" explanation of the origin of the buttercup. This tale concerns the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow:
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