Ranunculus acrisL.

meadow buttercup

WFO wfo-0000461396 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Ranunculus acris, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. a Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205250875
Ranunculus acris, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. b Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205890982
Ranunculus acris, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. c Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205528844
Ranunculus acris, photographed by Sheelagh Halsey
fig. d Sheelagh Halsey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204605332
Ranunculus acris, photographed by Eric Schmidt
fig. e Eric Schmidt, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205028114
Ranunculus acris, photographed by Cilla Moerman
fig. f Cilla Moerman, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204427068
Ranunculus acris, photographed by Татьяна Фирсова
fig. g Татьяна Фирсова, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204641407
Ranunculus acris, photographed by Jon Mortin
fig. h Jon Mortin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203913855

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 5,045 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 5,045 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 50 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.

  • Ranunculastrum acre Fourr.
  • Ranunculastrum boraeanum Fourr.
  • Ranunculastrum nemorivagum (Jord.) Fourr.
  • Ranunculastrum vulgatum (Jord. ex Boreau) Fourr.
  • Ranunculus acris f. acris
  • Ranunculus acris f. multiplicipetalus B.Boivin
  • Ranunculus acris subsp. despectus Laínz
  • Ranunculus acris subsp. friesianus Rouy & Fouc.
  • Ranunculus acris subsp. glabriusculus (Rupr.) Á.Löve & D.Löve
  • Ranunculus acris subsp. scandinavicus (N.I.Orlova) Á.Löve & D.Löve
  • Ranunculus acris var. acris
  • Ranunculus acris var. latisectus Beck
  • Ranunculus acris var. minimus Vigo
  • Ranunculus acris var. multifidus DC.
  • Ranunculus acris var. pumilus Wahlenb.
  • Ranunculus acris var. sylvaticus (Thuill.) DC.
  • Ranunculus barthii Schur
  • Ranunculus boraeanus Jord.
  • Ranunculus borealis subsp. pumilus (J.Fellm.) Timokhina
  • Ranunculus borealis var. pumilus (J.Fellman) Tolm.
  • Ranunculus buergeri Miq.
  • Ranunculus cammarifolius Arv.-Touv.
  • Ranunculus colocensis Menyh.
  • Ranunculus csatoi Schur

and 26 more.

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.