Ranunculus sceleratusL.

cursed crowfoot

WFO wfo-0000463300 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Ranunculus sceleratus, photographed by Michel Langeveld
fig. a Michel Langeveld, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 203296975
Ranunculus sceleratus, photographed by Sheelagh Halsey
fig. b Sheelagh Halsey, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202486525
Ranunculus sceleratus, photographed by Karen Fry
fig. c Karen Fry, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205544841
Ranunculus sceleratus, photographed by Zakqary Roy
fig. d Zakqary Roy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204956883
Ranunculus sceleratus, photographed by Vladimír Fuka
fig. e Vladimír Fuka, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199464295
Ranunculus sceleratus, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. f Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201643671
Ranunculus sceleratus, photographed by Piermario Maculan
fig. g Piermario Maculan, CC0 1.0 / obs. 202534963
Ranunculus sceleratus, photographed by Grzegorz Grzejszczak
fig. h Grzegorz Grzejszczak, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 203788593

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 = 1,968 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 1,968 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 20 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.

  • Adonis palustris (Lour.) Raeusch.
  • Batrachium sceleratum (L.) Th.Fr. ex A.Pihl
  • Hecatonia palustris Lour.
  • Hecatonia scelerata Fourr.
  • Ranunculus apiophyllus St.-Lag.
  • Ranunculus carnosus Wall.
  • Ranunculus eremogenes Greene
  • Ranunculus eremogenes var. longissimus Lunell
  • Ranunculus eremogenes var. pubescens Lunell
  • Ranunculus holophyllus Hance
  • Ranunculus indicus Roxb.
  • Ranunculus oryzetorum Bunge
  • Ranunculus reptabundus Rupr.
  • Ranunculus sceleratus f. sceleratus
  • Ranunculus sceleratus subsp. multifidus (Nutt. ex Torr. & A.Gray) Hultén
  • Ranunculus sceleratus var. eremogenes Garrett
  • Ranunculus sceleratus var. longissimus (Lunell) L.D.Benson
  • Ranunculus sceleratus var. sceleratus
  • Ranunculus sceleratus var. sinensis H.Lév. & Vaniot
  • Ranunculus umbellatus Roxb. ex Willd.

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.