This is a low-growing hairless perennial found in deciduous woodland areas. It blooms early in Spring, before tree leaf development fully shades the ground. At the end of May the above-ground plant dies back and remains dormant until the following season.

Both leaves and flowers are highly glossy, a feature that distinguishes them from other woodland flowers blooming at the same time. Petals can vary in number between 8 and 11 and the sepals are usually 3 (sometimes 5). This variability is a rather atypical arrangement in flowering plants.

Leaves are fleshy dark green and heart-shaped. They contain high quantities of vitamin C and have been used in the past to compensate the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables available in early spring. (The German name is ‘Scorbut-weed’ (Skorbuts- or Scharbockskraut) referring to the disease caused by lack of vitamin C.)

Buttercups are an introduced species across most of the world, originally from Alaska and Greenland where they are thought to be native.

It is a perennial plant that spreads by rooting from leaf nodes along its prostrate stems. The flowering stems are more or less erect. Leaf stems are long and both leaves and stems may be finely hairy.

Flowers are 2-3cm in diameter. Each of the five bright yellow, shiny petals has a nectar pocket at its base, containing a sugary substance which attracts pollinating insects. The hairy sepals, green at first, become yellow as the flower matures.

The fruit is a cluster of hard seeds called achenes, each with a short 'beak'.

Buttercups are poisonous and may cause vomiting in cattle that inadvertently eat them along with a bite of meadow grass though the taste is bitter so they usually avoid them. (The plants can then take advantage of the cropped area around them to spread more easily. ) Once the plants are dried however, they lose their bitter taste and the poison becomes ineffective so dried hay containing buttercups is not harmful.

This plant is herbaceous, dying back down to its root-like rhizomes by mid summer. The rhizomes spread just below the earth surface and multiply quickly, contributing to its rapid spread in woodland conditions.

The leaves grow in a whorl just below the point on the stem where the long flower stalks (usually 2) arise. They are so deeply dissected, the lobes appear to be almost completely separate (compound leaf). The lobes themselves have irregular tooth-like (dentate) margins.

The flower is about 1.5-2cm in diameter, with from five to eight petal-like segments of rich yellow colouring. These are in fact tepals, so-called when petals and sepals are of similar shape and colour or undifferentiated.

Seeds (carpels) are carried in a cluster, see photo button !S! below.

The whole plant is poisonous, containing, amongst others, the toxin protanemonin that causes sickness and diarrhea.

This is a herbaceous perennial plant, dying back after flowering an fruiting to survive the rest of the year as an underground root-like stem (rhizome). The rhizomes can spread rapidly in favourable conditions producing numerous offshoots per plant and carpeting large areas.

It is an early flowering plant, making use of the availability of light before tree foliage shades the woodland floor. Flowers approx. 2cm diameter, closing at night and in cold conditions.

The fruits develop as clusters of single seeds (carpels), each with a short extension (elaiosome) containing fats and proteins that attract ants who collect them and carry them to their nests, so aiding the process of seed dispersal.

This is a potentially endangered species and should never be picked. Although it usually favours damp grassland it can also be found on dry grassland or in open woodland or scrub.

It is tall perennial plant, (up to 120cm high( and carries at the tips of its branches masses of scented, pale creamy flowers looking like dense, hairy clusters that conspicuously reflect the sunlight.

The lower leaves on the plant are paler green and with broad leaved, coarsely dentate leaflets whereas the leaves further up the stem have narrow, feathery leaflets, dark, shiny green and with a prominent mid-rib.

This is an endangered species! It’s an annual plant, each season a new generation grows up from seeds so it thrives on cultivated land where the soil is regularly disturbed. In recent decades however, has become increasingly rare as a result of the intensive use of herbicides.

It is difficult to recognize the connection of this delphinium-like flower with the rest of the buttercup family, mainly on account of the prominent spur that confuses perception of the flower structure. The reproductive parts, (stamens and stigma), bend upwards as the flower matures, so accentuating the bilateral symmetry.