The marsh marigold or kingcup ( Caltha palustris ) likes the water margins, being unfussy if it is just in or just out of the wet. Some, however, are bog plants or even aquatics. Other than the florist's buttercup, most ranunculus will grow in a border as long as the soil is rich and retains moisture. It is easiest to grow the bulbs in pots, overwintering them in a greenhouse and bringing them out into the sunshine to flower.
Double meadow buttercup full#
If you are growing them, they need the opposite of the moisture-loving, shade-tolerant European buttercups, liking good drainage and full sunshine. They will last a good week or more as a cut flower in clean water (which they will drink at a great rate), although the leaves should be stripped first as they quickly go slimy. They are available as singles or as doubles, some of which are packed with petal, as densely as a cabbage rose.
The voluptuous flowers come in deep crimson, orange, white and pink, as well as yellow. The florist's or Persian buttercup, Ranunculus asiaticus, is where the yellow dominance leaves the spectrum. The equally helpfully named 'Alabaster' is ivory coloured. 'Feuertroll' is a rich orange, as is 'Orange Princess'. Trollius chinensis has smaller, orangey flowers, and this has been crossed with T europaeus to produce a number of cultivars, under the collective grouping of T x cultorum. The flowers are fat globes, made up of 10 overlapping, inward-curving sepals wrapped around another 10 petals. They like moist, rich soil and flower early in May, mixing well with their distant buttercup cousins, aquilegias. The biggest and most dramatic buttercup is the globe flower, Trollius europaeus.
R aconitifolius also has a 'Flore Pleno' (known as 'Fair Maids of France' because it was reputed to have been bought to this country by the French Huguenots in the 17th century), which has white, multi-petalled flowers with a green centre that love wet ground and would do very well in our damp bit. R acris citrinus is similar but paler and lemony, as the name implies. The cultivated version of the Ranunculus acris is R acris 'Flore Pleno' ('Bachelor's buttons') which is double multi-petalled. I have just read that wood ash will curb it, so wood ash is what it is going to get in our spring garden.īut there is no need to be wary of most other types of buttercup. The lesser celandine has the odd habit of its leaves dying back after flowering, deceiving the gardener into believing it has gone away while it is merely coiled for further invasion in late winter. Neither are compatible with border planting. While it is a joy in a damp wood, for the gardener it is a weed as intrusive and difficult to be rid of as another woodland delight, the bluebell. I am already invaded by Ranunculus ficaria, the lesser celandine, which has tiny kidney-shaped leaves beneath its golden flowers. But it will cross with the single-flowering weed, so it needs to be well clear of it, or else you could find yourself invaded.
Double meadow buttercup Patch#
However, if you are brave and have a fundamentally dry garden with a damp patch of grass, you could try growing R repens 'Pleniflorus', which is taller and has flowers with a double row of petals flowering between now and mid-July. It has roots that grip hard to the roots of other precious plants, and only by tucking your fingers right under the base of the plants and pulling hard will it come away to reveal its distinctive trailing tentacles of white roots. We also have the creeping buttercup, Ranunculus repens, which is threatening to become a seriously intrusive weed into the increasingly wet soil. This is why they are so common in the long grass of orchards and are dominant in carefully contrived garden 'wildflower meadows'. Their common name hints at their survival pattern - they are a plant of hay meadows and adapt well to the annual cycle of cutting in midsummer, but are easily grazed out of existence. Feet measure the length of my shoes and metres are Linnaean in their rational abstraction). They like a damp soil in grassland, their branched stems growing 3-4ft tall (I should say a metre, but I can't make any reality out of it. The obvious orchard buttercups are Ranunculus acris, the meadow buttercup - the one that we have all held under our chin to see if the reflection proves whether we like butter or not.
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