User:Mellis/Lesser celandine

Ficaria verna, (formerly Ranunculus ficaria L.) commonly known as Lesser celandine is a low-growing, hairless perennial flowering plant in the buttercup family Ranunculaceae. It has fleshy dark green, heart-shaped leaves and distinctive flowers with bright yellow, glossy petals. The plant is found throughout Europe and west Asia. It is now introduced in North America, where it is known by the common name fig buttercup and where it is considered an invasive species. The plant is poisonous if ingested raw, and potentially fatal to grazing animals and livestock such as cattle and sheep. For these reasons, several US states have banned the plant or listed it as a Noxious weed. It prefers bare, damp ground and is considered by horticulturalists in the United Kingdom as a persistent garden weed. Lesser celandine typically flowers March through May.

Ecology
Lesser celandine occurs on land that is seasonally wet or flooded but is absent from permanently waterlogged sites. In both shaded woodlands and open areas, Ficaria verna begins growth in the winter when temperatures are low and days are short. The plants mostly propagate and spread vegetatively, although some subspecies are capable of producing up to 73 seeds per flower. Germination of seeds begins in the spring, and continues into summer. Seedlings remain small for their first year, producing only 1 or 2 leaves until the second year. Growth and reproduction is poor in dry or acidic conditions, though the plants can handle drought well in dormancy. By late spring, second year plants quickly age with as daylight hours lengthen and temperatures rise. By the end of May, foliage has died back and plants enter a 6-month dormancy phase.

If disturbed, separation of the plant's numerous basal tubers is an efficient means of vegetative propagation. The plants are easily spread by the root tubers following ploughing, digging, or erosion Erosion is a particularly effective means of spread, as the plants are very successful at colonizing low-lying floodplains once deposited.

Ficaria verna exists in both diploid (2n=16) and tetraploid (2n=32) forms which are very similar in appearance. However, the tetraploid type prefer more shady locations and can develops up to 24 bulbils at the base of the stalk. Subspecies F. verna bulbilifera, F. verna chrysocephalus, and F. verna ficariiformis are tetraploid and capable of colonizing new areas much faster because of bulbil production. Subspecies F. verna calthifolia and F. verna verna are diploid and hybrids between subspecies often create sterile triploid forms.

Ficaria verna as an invasive species
In many parts of the northern United States and Canada, lesser celandine is cited as an invasive species. It poses a threat to native wildflowers, especially those ephemeral flowers with a spring-flowering lifecycle. It is mainly a problem in floodplain forests, where it forms extensive mats, but it also can occur on upland sites as well. Once established, native plants are displaced and ground is left barren and susceptible to erosion in from early to winter during the plant's dormancy phase.

In North America, the US National Park Service's Plant Conservation Alliance recommends avoiding planting lesser celandine, and instead planting native ephemeral wildflowers such as Asarum canadense, bloodroot, the native twinleaf (Jeffersonia diphylla), and various species of trillium as alternatives.

Medicinal uses
section The plant used to be known as pilewort because it was used to treat hemorrhoids. Supposedly, the knobbly tubers of the plant resemble piles, and according to the doctrine of signatures this resemblance suggests that pilewort could be used to cure piles. The German vernacular skorbutkraut ("scurvyherb") derives from the use of the early leaves, which are high in vitamin C, to prevent scurvy. The plant is widely used in Russia and is sold in most pharmacies as a dried herb.

Medicines should be made from the dried herb or by heat extraction as the plant contains protoanemonin, a mild toxin. A single case was reported with acute hepatitis occurring after consuming a remedy made from lesser celandine. However, the process of heating or drying turns the toxin to anemonin which is non-toxic and has antispasmodic and analgesic properties.

References in literature
The poet William Wordsworth was very fond of the flower and it inspired him to write three poems including the following from his ode to the celandine:


 * I have seen thee, high and low,
 * Thirty years or more, and yet
 * T'was a face I did not know.

Upon Wordsworth's death it was proposed that a celandine be carved on his memorial plaque inside St Oswald's Church, Grasmere, but unfortunately the greater celandine Chelidonium majus was mistakenly used.

Edward Thomas wrote a poem entitled "Celadine." Encountering the flower in a field, the narrator is reminded of a past love, now dead.

C. S. Lewis mentions celandines in a key passage of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Aslan comes to Narnia and the whole wood passes "in a few hours or so from January to May". The children notice "wonderful things happening. Coming suddenly round a corner into a glade of silver birch trees Edmund saw the ground covered in all directions with little yellow flowers - celandines".

D. H. Lawrence mentions celandines frequently in Sons and Lovers. They appear to be a favorite of the protagonist, Paul Morrel;

"...going down the hedgeside with the girl, he noticed the celandines, scalloped splashes of gold, on the side of the ditch. 'I like them' he said 'when their petals go flat back with the sunshine. They seem to be pressing themselves at the sun.'

And then the celandines ever after drew her with a little spell."