Ranunculus repensL.

Creeping buttercup

WFO wfo-0000463198 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Ranunculus repens, photographed by Tony Rebelo
fig. a Tony Rebelo, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2017-06-24 / obs. 31136419
Ranunculus repens, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. b Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205894190
Ranunculus repens, photographed by Hazel Tzinski
fig. c Hazel Tzinski, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205617401
Ranunculus repens, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. d Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205894641
Ranunculus repens, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. e Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205690455
Ranunculus repens, photographed by Antony Coombs
fig. f Antony Coombs, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205565555
Ranunculus repens, photographed by Daniel Cahen
fig. g Daniel Cahen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205524233
Ranunculus repens, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. h Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205894032

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 = 6,731 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 6,731 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 23 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 repens Fourr.
  • Ranunculastrum reptabundum Fourr.
  • Ranunculus belvisii DC.
  • Ranunculus caleyanus G.Don
  • Ranunculus clintonii L.C.Beck
  • Ranunculus intermedius Eaton
  • Ranunculus lagascanus DC.
  • Ranunculus lucidus Poir.
  • Ranunculus oenanthefolius Ten. & Guss.
  • Ranunculus prostratus Poir.
  • Ranunculus pubescens Lag.
  • Ranunculus repens f. polypetalus S.H.Li & Y.H.Huang
  • Ranunculus repens f. schlechtendalii Kurtz
  • Ranunculus repens var. brevistylus Maxim.
  • Ranunculus repens var. erectus DC.
  • Ranunculus repens var. glabratus DC.
  • Ranunculus repens var. linearilobus DC.
  • Ranunculus repens var. major Nakai
  • Ranunculus repens var. pleniflorus Fernald
  • Ranunculus repens var. repens
  • Ranunculus repens var. villosus Lamotte
  • Ranunculus schlechtendalii Hook.
  • Ranunculus semidecurrens Opiz

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.