Ranunculus ficariaL.

lesser celandine

WFO wfo-0000460581 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Ranunculus ficaria, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. a Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203253346
Ranunculus ficaria, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. b Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203317982
Ranunculus ficaria, photographed by sergleb
fig. c sergleb, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203556884
Ranunculus ficaria, photographed by Силаева Татьяна Борисовна
fig. d Силаева Татьяна Борисовна, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202666039
Ranunculus ficaria, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. e Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203325872
Ranunculus ficaria, photographed by Jenny Saito
fig. f Jenny Saito, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202867669
Ranunculus ficaria, photographed by Силаева Татьяна Борисовна
fig. g Силаева Татьяна Борисовна, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203569648
Ranunculus ficaria, photographed by aga_l_
fig. h aga_l_, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201688782

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 = 57,779 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 57,779 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 49 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.

  • Caltha hiranoi Tamura
  • Chelidonium minus Garsault
  • Ficaria ambigua Boreau
  • Ficaria aperta Schur
  • Ficaria boryi Heldr. ex Nyman
  • Ficaria bulbifera (Á.Löve & D.Löve) Holub
  • Ficaria calthifolia Rchb.
  • Ficaria chrysocephala (P.D.Sell) Galasso, Banfi & Soldano
  • Ficaria communis Dum.Cours.
  • Ficaria degenii Harv.
  • Ficaria fertilis (A.R.Clapham ex Laegaard) Galasso, Banfi & Soldano
  • Ficaria ficaria (L.) H.Karst.
  • Ficaria ficariiformis (F.W.Schultz) A.W.Hill
  • Ficaria grandiflora Robert
  • Ficaria holubyi Schur
  • Ficaria intermedia Schur
  • Ficaria ledebourii Grossh. & Schischk.
  • Ficaria nudicaulis A.Kern.
  • Ficaria peloponnesiaca Nyman
  • Ficaria polypetala Gilib.
  • Ficaria pumila Velen.
  • Ficaria ranunculiflora Moench ex St.-Lag.
  • Ficaria ranunculoides Roth
  • Ficaria roberti F.W.Schultz

and 25 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.