It enjoys heavy, nutrient rich soils, and can be found mainly in wet grasslands, woods and ditches throughout Scotland. Hans Wieland is training manager at The Organic Centre, Rossinver, Co Leitrim, which offers courses, training and information on organic growing and cooking, and runs an Eco Shop and an online gardening store.Also called creeping crowsfoot, this invasive weed is poisonous to cattle, as are other varieties of Ranunculus. I have discovered a very interesting symbiotic relationship between creeping buttercup and leatherjackets (the larvae of the Daddy Long-leg and a pest in itself, nibbling off the tender roots of young seedlings and plants): Pull up a creeping buttercup and most likely you will find a leatherjacket hidden amongst its tentacles of roots, because both like compacted, damp soil.Īnd no, you cannot eat leather jackets, unless… more about that another day! Generally, with a lot of weeds, I find good thorough bed preparation (hoeing, raking) is the best start to control and eradicate weeds. Suppressing it there by mulching only works to a degree, and I usually pull it up. Long-lived seeds in the soil can germinate and re-infest the area once cultivation ceases.Ĭreeping buttercup is not a problem anymore in my established garden and the cultivated beds, but the weed tries hard to sneak in from the surrounding field or the paths between the beds. Certainly do not dig in! Regular cultivation can kill the buttercup, but plants buried by cultivation can grow back up through deep soil and re-establish themselves.Digging and pulling out the whole plant is most effective when the soil is moist and roots won’t break off as much. Dig out with a sharp trowel or a garden fork and remove all of the runners, roots and growing points.Create a good structure, with nice loose, crumbly soil. Reduce compaction by aerating and avoid trampling when soils are wet.To ensure success, improve your soil with compost and farmyard manure and have good drainage. That said, watching our goats eating it, they didn’t seem too bothered. In fact, it is very bitter, and fresh buttercup plants can be slightly toxic to both humans and to grazing animals, causing salivation and diarrhoea. Well my surreal fantasies of eating creeping buttercup alive don’t really work as it is NOT edible. With such formidable qualities aiding reproduction and survival, it is hard to stop this primitive plant. Creeping buttercup is tolerant of trampling and grazing, and the rosette of leaves escapes lawnmowers. They can germinate and seedlings can grow under water-logged conditions. The weed spreads by seed and makes good use of ground-level stolons (runners). It’s competitive growth crowds out other plants and one single plant can spread over a 40 square foot area in a year.Ĭreeping buttercup also depletes potassium in the soil and so can have a detrimental effect on surrounding plants. On a more mundane note, creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens), is a very common perennial weed indicating wet, often acidic, soil with poor drainage. We gardeners know better and have our own names for this noxious weed: ‘Sitfast’, ‘creeping crowfoot’, ‘devil’s guts’ and ‘ram’s claws’. When seen from a distance in a wildflower meadow, the beautiful yellow flowers are “deliciously evocative of fresh farm butter – hence it’s most commonly used name” (W Edmonds in ‘Weeds, Weeding (and Darwin)’). Little did I know then that the ‘stark reality’ of this noxious weed in my garden would lead to my own ‘surreal fantasies’ of eating it alive. The story follows the actions of a store owner as he is haunted by the memory of a buttercup he destroyed one evening while walking in the woods. PERENNIAL PROBLEM?The notoriously stubborn creeping buttercup is a perennial weed indicating wet, often acidic, soil with poor drainage.? Pic: /Matt LavinĪs a student of German Literature in the early ’70s, I came across ‘Die Ermordung einer Butterblume’ (‘The Murder of a Buttercup’), an expressionist short story by one of my favourite German writers, Alfred Döblin.
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