Ranunculus arvensis

Corn buttercup

Family: Ranunculaceae · Type: annual · Not Native

Corn buttercup is a naturalized annual herb found in northern California bioregions including Klamath Ranges, North Coast Ranges Interior, Cascade Range, northern Sierra Nevada Foothills, Sacramento Valley, and Modoc Plateau in roadsides, fields, and disturbed areas at elevations below 1,000 meters. Flowering from April to May, this plant produces yellow flowers with five petals 5 to 8 millimeters long. Growing 10 to 40 centimeters tall with erect or ascending stems, it develops from an annual or biennial habit. Its distinctive leaves are deeply lobed or dissected, with obovate to wedge-shaped basal and lower cauline leaves featuring oblanceolate leaflets divided into entire or distally dentate segments. The fruit develops a disk-like body with spiny walls and a straight lanceolate beak 1.6 to 3.8 millimeters long.

Habitat: Roadsides, fields, disturbed areas

Bloom period: Apr-May

Elevation: < 1000 m

Bioregions: KR, NCoRI, CaR, n SNF, ScV, MP

California counties: Mendocino, Butte, San Luis Obispo, El Dorado, Orange, Lake, Colusa, Del Norte, Sacramento, Nevada, Yuba, Sonoma, Siskiyou, Tehama, Shasta, Modoc, Lassen, Napa, Santa Cruz, Humboldt, Solano, Trinity, Mariposa, Alameda, Tuolumne

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.