Meadow Crowfoot – The Daily Flower for 20 August

If you’ve ever looked closely at the tarsus of Corvus corone, you’re probably wondering how on earth meadow crowfoot became the common name of Ranunculus acris. Apparently, it’s something to do with the three-part pedate leaves, which seems to suggest (since we’re talking about the flowers, after all) that we should stick to the more apt monikers of meadow buttercup and gold cup – far more accurate descriptions of the yellow goblet-shaped petals.

Buttercup landscape V by Till Westermayer

Certainly, the five yellow petals and central mass of saffron-hued stamens have a radiance deserving of the floriogrpahic connotation ‘brilliancy’. Perhaps this is why the flower was the accessory du jour of pre-nuptial lovers in the days of yore.

Good for giving to: Shiny-eyed fiancées (whose eyelids are wrinkle-free).

Great crowfoots in literature: Charlotte Perkins Gilman puts the buttercup above those thousand jaundiced images of which our souls are constituted:

“It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.”
From The Yellow Wallpaper

Find out more about The Daily Flower series and floriography.

Tags: flowers, crowfoot, buttercup, Ranunculus acris, floriography