Aquatic and Wetland Vascular Plants of the Northern Great Plains

Ranunculaceae - The Buttercup Family

Aquatic to terrestrial herbs (in those included here). Leaves simple to palmately lobed or compound, alternate or mostly to entirely basal, usually petioled, exstipulate or stipulate. Flowers perfect, regular, hypogynous; sepals usually 5, occasionally more, herbaceous and greenish or petaloid and colored, often deciduous; petals 5 or none, seldom more than 5, usually yellow or white; stamens usually numerous; pistils several to many, simple, ripening into beaked achenes or follicles.

Lead	Characteristic	Go To
1	Pistils containing several ovules, maturing into follicles; leaves shallowly toothed, not divided into filaments or lobes.	Genus Caltha (C. palustris)
1	Pistils containing 1 ovule, maturing into achenes; leaves all or mostly divided into lobes or filaments (except in Ranunculus cymbalaria, R. flammula, and Myosurus, which have undivided leaves.	Lead 2
2	Sepals spurred at the base; achenes borne in a spikelike cluster on an elongate receptacle.	Genus Myosurus
2	Sepals not spurred; achenes borne in a globose to short-cylindric cluster.	Lead 3
3	Flowers white, 2-5 cm across; leaves all basal except for the leaflike involucres subtending the flowers, deeply lobed.	Genus Anemone
3	Flowers yellow or white, but if white, then the flowers less than 2 cm across and the leaves finely dissected into filamentous segments; leaves cauline or basal.	Genus Ranunculus