You’ll find it especially on wet sandy soils, in both shaded woodlands, and open areas. 7. It was popular in the past for providing vitamin C to otherwise scurvy-prone people. Now, you may be thinking “Oooh, pretty buttercups.” But this plant has some nasty habits that are destroying native spring ephemeral wildflowers. Lesser celandine is sometime applied directly to the skin for bleeding wounds and gums, swollen joints, warts, scratches, and hemorrhoids. ... and edible plant beds. It spreads effectively and can produce carpets of yellow flowers under trees, on shaded hedge-banks and in woodland. Stephen Jones. Lesser Celandine This plant is best eaten before it flowers, and should be cooked first because it contains protaonemonin, which is a toxic compound that is destroyed by heat. The Lesser Celandine is distinguished from the Buttercup by having nine or ten, even sometimes a dozen narrow petals, instead of five, and only three sepals (the outer, generally green leaves of the flower), which fall off on opening, instead of the usual five, which remain after the flower has expanded, in the other species of Ranunculus. It is only edible before flowering, and when cooked. The seeds develop into little tubers, storing extra food for the plants growth within shaded areas where light is limited. Lesser Celandine. Lesser celandine has three effective secret weapons for survival and spread. I had always thought celandines were poisonous until Mandy mentioned them last spring in her blog post on the edible lawn.It's important to note that the plant we're talking about here is the lesser celandine, Ranunculus ficaria, not the greater celandine, Chelidonium majus, which most definitely is poisonous and is completely unrelated to the lesser celandine. April 19, 2020 at 8:15 am. But the leaf, as you can see above, is very similar. The flower of lesser celandine looks very different from violet, it's yellow and star-shaped. The leaves appear in late winter, forming a dense mat which prevents the growth of almost every other plant. The fig buttercup, also known as the lesser celandine or pilewort, is a non-native plant from Europe and Northern Africa that has the potential to become a very bad invasive species in South Carolina. Ficaria verna, (formerly Ranunculus ficaria L.) commonly known as Don't confuse greater celandine with lesser celandine (Family: Ranunculus ficaria). Reply. One of these is Ranunculus ficaria (Lesser Celandine, Fig Buttercup). Lesser celandine (Ficaria verna) is a one such “spring ephemeral”—a term typically reserved for the native woodland plants that come and go in this narrow window of time, including many delicate beauties like trout lily and trillium. 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