Cow’s Udders Aside: Bitter Buttercups

A couple weeks back, in "Myth and Folklore: Buttercups", I wrote of dairy farmers rubbing the flowers on cow's udders to help make their milk rich with golden cream. I wrote of beggars in Europe who once rubbed buttercup juice on their skin to raise sores, which would in turn encourage passersby to be more generous with their alms. All this and other folklore aside, buttercups are easily recognized and much beloved wildflowers, which get a leg up on the scenery as early as February, and last well into the summer.

Buttercups lend their name to the family crest, the Buttercup (or Crowfoot) Family (Ranunculacea), as well as their genus, Ranunculus. Ranunculus means "little frog", presumably because most species, like most frogs, prefer a wet habitat. The Crowfoot name comes from the leaves of some plants, which have many slender, pointy lobes and are said to resemble the foot of a large bird.

Theirs is a genus of about 400 species, and are widely distributed throughout the temperate regions of the world. More than 80 species occur in North America. While many of these "little frogs" do prefer a wet environment, some prefer grasslands or summer-dried sights. Many non-native species are popular with gardeners.

On the botanical evolutionary ladder, buttercups stopped climbing a long time ago. While many flowers kept up with the Jones's, which in this case means attracting insects, buttercups did not evolve specialized forms to lure in pollinators. No belly-up to the bar and a lap dance please for buttercups. It's strictly petals, pistils and stamens; your basic primitive design, and like many other yellow flowers, they attract a variety of insects. Judging by their numbers, it is a strategy that works. Their bitterness helps too.

Nearly all species of buttercup are, to some degree, acrid, some painfully so. Some have even been known as "blister plant." Possibly the bitterness of buttercups evolved as a defense against browsers; animals that would otherwise graze on it.

Arguably the most powerful of our acrid buttercups is Cursed Crowfoot (R. sceleratus). While the species name has probably come from its usage meaning "sharp", nipping", or "biting", it has had less friendly meanings such "unnatural", "wicked", "irreligious", and "ungodly." Kind of incongruous for so lovely and beloved a wildflower, but not so for a wildflower that can raise blisters.

Buttercups have been used medicinally, but as C.G. and I.U. Lloyd wrote back in the mid 1840's, "In the olden time the different acrid species of Ranunculus were used rather freely in medicine. As the practice of medicine inclined towards a humane system, physicians gradually substituted less virulent remedies ... even externally."

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