Ranunculus occidentalisNutt.

Western Buttercup

WFO wfo-0001129430 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Ranunculus occidentalis, photographed by Ellyne Geurts
fig. a Ellyne Geurts, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 195275534
Ranunculus occidentalis, photographed by Ellyne Geurts
fig. b Ellyne Geurts, CC0 1.0 / obs. 195214644
Ranunculus occidentalis, photographed by Casey H. Richart
fig. c Casey H. Richart, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203747604
Ranunculus occidentalis, photographed by Casey H. Richart
fig. d Casey H. Richart, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203752242
Ranunculus occidentalis, photographed by Ellyne Geurts
fig. e Ellyne Geurts, CC0 1.0 / obs. 195221422
Ranunculus occidentalis, photographed by Daniel Levitis
fig. f Daniel Levitis, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194872590
Ranunculus occidentalis, photographed by P Holroyd
fig. g P Holroyd, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192075953
Ranunculus occidentalis, photographed by Dominic Gentilcore
fig. h Dominic Gentilcore, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189740702

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 = 1,217 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 1,217 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 19 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 alceus Greene
  • Ranunculus arcuatus A.Heller
  • Ranunculus ciliosus Howell
  • Ranunculus douglasii Howell
  • Ranunculus eisenii Kellogg
  • Ranunculus hexasepalus (L.D.Benson) L.D.Benson
  • Ranunculus howellii Greene
  • Ranunculus marmorarius Jeps. & Tracy
  • Ranunculus nelsonii (DC.) A.Gray
  • Ranunculus nelsonii subsp. insularis Hultén
  • Ranunculus nelsonii var. glabriusculus Holz.
  • Ranunculus occidentalis subsp. insularis Hultén
  • Ranunculus occidentalis subsp. nelsonii (DC.) Hultén
  • Ranunculus occidentalis var. eisenii (Kellogg) A.Gray
  • Ranunculus occidentalis var. occidentalis
  • Ranunculus occidentalis var. rattanii A.Gray
  • Ranunculus rattanii Howell
  • Ranunculus recurvatus var. nelsonii DC.
  • Ranunculus tenuipes A.Heller

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.