Description
The plain species A. ranunculoides, is an easily-grown plant with a delightful and delicate-looking growth habit. It is vaguely similar in appearance to A. nemorosa but it differs in flower colour of course, as well as its rhizomes with a different structure and also the appearance of the leaves. It grows from small, narrow, claw-like caramel-brown rhizomes. In April, this makes bright green, ferny leaves and rich buttercup-yellow flowers. Each stem usually has two or more flowers at once borne in a branched tuft at the top of the flower stem and it is both free-flowering and without demerits.
In the clone Golden Dream, the anthers develop into miniature, green, ferny, petalloid leaves, in the centre of the flowers. This makes the most remarkable contrast between green and bright yellow and is a very attractive feature, this same petalloid tendency is also known in some clones of A. nemorosa. The petioles of these tiny leaves, take on a rich Indian-red shade in good light (paler in shade). This is judged to be one of the best of the newer clones which have entered cultivation from Estonia.
Please note, that the leaf tuft in the flower takes on several different forms. In some cases it is just developmental in that the mature flower looks different to the young flower (a young flower is shown in our gallery), in other flowers the different appearance is because they actually are different! There isn’t ‘true-form’, ‘correct form’ or even a typical form, just a wonderful, decorative trend and this lack of total constancy is both typical and characteristic. Different flower structures may even appear on different flowers borne on the same scape, so that one stem holds 3 or 4 different flowers, some only subtly different from each other, some markedly so – you can see one such floral group, with 3 different flowers on the same stem, in our gallery pictures.
