Botanical atlas

Glacier Buttercup

Ranunculus glacialis

Glacier Buttercup does not carry a history in the herbalist's cabinet the way many of its lowland cousins do. What it carries instead is a reputation among mountaineers and botanists as one of the boldest flowers in Europe, a plant that pushes its roots into gravel barely free of ice and opens its petals within days of the snow's retreat. Alpine explorers and naturalists of the nineteenth century prized sightings of it near mountain summits as proof of just how far life could climb, and it still shows up in accounts of high-altitude botany as a marker of the tree line's opposite extreme. Like its buttercup relatives, it was traditionally left alone by herders and foragers alike, since fresh Ranunculus foliage is acrid and irritating rather than useful.

In tradition.

Glacier Buttercup does not carry a history in the herbalist's cabinet the way many of its lowland cousins do. What it carries instead is a reputation among mountaineers and botanists as one of the boldest flowers in Europe, a plant that pushes its roots into gravel barely free of ice and opens its petals within days of the snow's retreat. Alpine explorers and naturalists of the nineteenth century prized sightings of it near mountain summits as proof of just how far life could climb, and it still shows up in accounts of high-altitude botany as a marker of the tree line's opposite extreme. Like its buttercup relatives, it was traditionally left alone by herders and foragers alike, since fresh Ranunculus foliage is acrid and irritating rather than useful.

Safety.

Like other buttercups, glacier buttercup contains ranunculin, which turns into the acrid irritant protoanemonin when the plant is bruised or chewed, causing skin blistering and painful mouth and throat irritation. It has no food or herbal use and should never be eaten or applied to the skin.