Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Glacier buttercup

Ranunculus glacialis

Also called Glacier Crowfoot

Glacier buttercup
Photo: Alinja, CC BY-SA 3.0

Glacier buttercup is a small, cold-adapted alpine perennial with a single large white-to-pink flower, native to high mountains and Arctic regions. It is not a practical garden plant; it needs cold, gritty, well-drained conditions and cool summers to survive.

Family
Ranunculaceae (Buttercup family)
Grows as
Perennial
Light
Full sun
Water
Keep the soil evenly moist during the growing season and never let it dry out completely; avoid waterlogging.
Soil
Gritty, free-draining mineral mix with added grit or stone chips.
Temperature
Cool conditions suit it best; it tolerates hard winter cold but struggles in warm summers and heat.
How easy
Hard
Safety
Toxic: All parts of buttercups contain protoanemonin, which causes skin blistering and mouth and stomach irritation if eaten.. Toxic to cats and dogs (ASPCA).
Native range
E. Greenland to Subarctic and Subalpine Eurasia
Climate
subalpine or subarctic

About

Ranunculus glacialis, the glacier buttercup or glacier crowfoot, is a plant of the family Ranunculaceae. It is a 5-10(-20) cm high perennial herb. Often with a single relatively large (1.8 - 3.8 cm) flower, with 5 petals first white later pink or reddish. The underside of the 5 sepals are densely brown-hairy. The leaves are fleshy, shiny, and deeply loped, forming 3 leaflets. Ranunculus glacialis is reported (from Greenland material) to have a diploid chromosome number of 2n = 16.

Where it grows

Ranunculus glacialis is an Arctic–alpine species, found in the high mountains of southern Europe (Alps, Pyrenees, Carpathians, Sierra Nevada) as well as on the Scandinavian peninsula, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Jan Mayen, Svalbard, eastern Greenland and Finland, where it is endangered and protected.

Other Ranunculus plants

Littleleaf buttercup · Aconite-leaf buttercup · Meadow buttercup · White water crowfoot · Asian Buttercup · Brackish Water-crowfoot · St. Anthony's turnip · Ranunculus calandrinioides · California buttercup · Greater creeping spearwort · Ranunculus gramineus · Ivy buttercup

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Ranunculus glacialis by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Pet safety from the ASPCA toxic and non-toxic plant lists.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…