Ranunculus abortivusL.

small-flowered buttercup

WFO wfo-0001129250 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Ranunculus abortivus, photographed by Violet T.
fig. a Violet T., CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205253887
Ranunculus abortivus, photographed by M. Squire
fig. b M. Squire, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203020182
Ranunculus abortivus, photographed by Quinten Wiegersma
fig. c Quinten Wiegersma, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203745804
Ranunculus abortivus, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. d Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 199343287
Ranunculus abortivus, photographed by Henry "Nick" Robertson
fig. e Henry "Nick" Robertson, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 198996651
Ranunculus abortivus, photographed by Bob
fig. f Bob, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197873673
Ranunculus abortivus, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. g Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 197923240

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 2,941 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 2,941 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 14 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Ranunculus abortivus f. abortivus
  • Ranunculus abortivus f. coptidifolius Fernald
  • Ranunculus abortivus f. pratensis G.Lawson
  • Ranunculus abortivus f. sylvaticus G.Lawson
  • Ranunculus abortivus subsp. acrolasius (Fernald) B.M.Kapoor & Á.Löve
  • Ranunculus abortivus var. abortivus
  • Ranunculus abortivus var. acrolasius Fernald
  • Ranunculus abortivus var. eucyclus Fernald
  • Ranunculus abortivus var. indivisus Fernald
  • Ranunculus abortivus var. nitidus (Walter) DC.
  • Ranunculus holmii Greene
  • Ranunculus michiganensis Farw.
  • Ranunculus nitidus Walter
  • Ranunculus ruderalis Greene

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.