Ranunculus hybrid?

[treecreeper]

I found lots of odd Ranunculus plants this afternoon on a shaded footpath. Also present were Meadow Buttercup Ranunculus acris and Creeping Buttercup Ranunculus repens. The odd ones had the taller habit of R. acris but the grooved flower stems of R. repens. Leaves were pretty well intermediate between the two pure species. The most striking feature was the petals which were laterally compressed.

Could these plants have been hybrids? Pics:

[pleb]

Hi TC,

I expect you've searched for any records of hybrids between R. acris and R. repens. As far as I can tell from my books and the web there isn't any record. I dislike hybrids because I find that I have enough hassle trying to cope with the full species (not to mention subspecies) If it does turn out to be a hybrid then it could be a first.

The Plant Crib http://www.bsbi.org.uk/Ranunculus.pdf says that R. repens is very variable and has some examples of leaf variation. The flower petals are certainly strange. This is probably a plant for the experts but I would tend to accept it as a 'strange' Ranunculus repens.

At http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/87/1/9.pdf there is lots more about leaf variation in R. repens and lots of maths as well

Hope this helps.

Pleb

[treecreeper]

Thanks Pleb, these are very interesting links. It seems these plants are much more variable than the floras admit. I'll just add that the plants were on an abandoned WW2 RAF station (full of orchids, by the way) and nowhere near houses.