This is perhaps an ecological disaster, but it is a gorgeous ecological disaster, and a woodland carpeted with celandine is not to be missed. The plant is a European import, not very common around here except in a few stream valleys, where it covers the ground so thickly that little else can grow. This vast colony grows in the Squaw Run valley in Fox Chapel, where it was blooming in the middle of April.

Gray describes the genus and the species:

RANÚNCULUS [Tourn.] L. CROWFOOT. BUTTERCUP. Annuals or perennials; stem-leaves alternate. Flowers solitary or somewhat corymbed, yellow, rarely white. (Sepals and petals rarely only 3, the latter often more than 5. Stamens occasionally few.) — (A Latin name for a little frog; applied by Pliny to these plants, the aquatic species growing where frogs abound.)

§ 1. FICÀRIA Boiss. Roots tuberous-thickened; sepals 3; petals about 8, yellow, with a free scale over the honey gland.

R. ficària L. (LESSER CELANDINE.) Glabrous and somewhat succulent; leaves basal on long stoutish petioles, ovate, rounded, deeply cordate, subcrenate; flowers scapose, 2 cm. in diameter. (Ficaria Karst.) — Wet places, occasional; Mass. to D. C. Apr., May. (Introd. from Eurasia.)

Also known as Fairy Candles for the way it lights up the deep shade of the woods, or as Black Snakeroot, or Bugbane, and more commonly placed in the genus Cimicifuga until recently. It can tolerate a very shady location, and often grows in thick woods. This plant was one of a small colony growing on a thickly wooded hillside in Mount Lebanon, where it was blooming in early July. Another picture of the same plant, but in a different year, is here.

Flowers. Tiny, white, in forked racemes 3 or more feet (a meter) tall, occasionally up to 9 feet (3 meters); the stamens are the most visible part.

Leaves. Large, smooth, in whorls of 3, each doubly compound leaf made of three leaflets which themselves are subdivided in three or five leaflets; the leaflets irregularly and jaggedly toothed, the terminal leaflet usually 3-lobed.

Stems. Smooth, with enlarged purplish joints where the leaves are joined; some whitish bloom on the lower part.

Gray describes the genus Cimicifuga and the species, which he places in the Macrotrys subgenus:

CIMICÍFUGA L. BUGBANE. Sepals 4 or 5, failing off soon after the flower expands. Petals, or rather transformed stamens, 1-8, small, on claws, 2-horned at the apex. Stamens as in Actaea. Pistils 1-8, forming dry dehiscent pods in fruit. — Perennials, with 2-3-ternately divided leaves, the leaflets cut-serrate, and white flowers in elongated wand-like racemes. (Name from cimex, a bug, and fugere, to drive away.)

MACRÒTRYS (Raf.) T. & G. (as Macrotys). Pistil solitary or sometimes 2-3, sessile; seeds smooth, flattened and packed horizontally in the pod in two rows, as in Actaea; stigma broad and flat.

C. racemòsa (L.) Nutt. (BLACK SNAKEROOT, BLACK COHOSH.) Stem 1-2.0 rn. high, from a thick knotted rootstock; leaves 2-3-ternately and then often quinately compound; leaflets subcuneate to subcordate at the base; racemes in fruit becoming 3-9 dm. long; pods ovoid. — Rich woods, s. N. E. to Wise, and southw.; cultivated and escaped eastw. July.

[Because modern botanists have moved this species over to the genus Actaea, we give Gray’s description of that genus as well:

The clusters of airy flowers have no petals; it’s the white stamens that put on the show. The triple-compound leaves are very Columbine-like. As the common name implies, Tall Meadow-Rue can be quite tall—easily taller than a person. But it manages to look delicate and refined even at its tallest.

This plant likes a wet environment, and this one was growing beside a lake in North Park, where it was blooming in the middle of July.

Gray describes the genus and the species:

THALÍCTRUM [Tourn.] L. MEADOW RUE. Sepals 4-5, petal-like or greenish, usually caducous. Petals none. Achenes 4-15, grooved or ribbed, or else inflated. Stigma unilateral. Seed suspended. — Perennials, with alternate 2-3-ternately compound leaves, the divisions and the leaflets stalked; petioles dilated at base. Flowers in corymbs or panicles, often polygamous or dioecious. (A Greek name of an unknown plant, mentioned by Dioscorides.)

Flowers dioecious or polygamous.

Achenes sessile or subsessile, thin-walled, the ribs often connected by transverse reticulations; leaves 3-4-ternate.

Filaments club-shaped, ascending or spreading until after anthesis.

T. polygamum Muhl. (tall M.) Glabrous or pubescent but not glandular, 0.5-2.6 m. high; stem-leaves sessile; leaflets rather firm, roundish to oblong, commonly with mucronate lobes or tips, sometimes puberulent beneath; panicles very compound; flowers white (rarely purplish), the fertile ones with some stamens; anthers not drooping, small, oblong, blunt, the mostly white filaments decidedly thickened upwards; achenes glabrous. (T. Cornuti Man. ed. 5, not L.) — Wet meadows and along rivulets, Nfd. to O. and southw., common. July-Sept. Var. hebecarpum Fernald. Leaflets usually pubescent beneath; achenes pubescent. — Nfd. to s. Ont, and N. H.

Long stamens dangle and wave in the breeze, identifying this this as a male plant. As the species name implies, this species has dioecious flowers (from Greek meaning “two houses”): that is, it bears male and female flowers on separate plants. The female flowers are little upright greenish clusters, but the male flowers are more common and more charming. In spite of the common name, Early Meadow Rue seems to prefer woods to meadows; this one was growing on a rocky hillside in the Squaw Run valley in Fox Chapel, where it was blooming at the beginning of May.

Gray describes the genus and the species:

THALÍCTRUM [Tourn.] L. MEADOW RUE. Sepals 4-5, petal-like or greenish, usually caducous. Petals none. Achenes 4-15, grooved or ribbed, or else inflated. Stigma unilateral. Seed suspended. — Perennials, with alternate 2-3-ternately compound leaves, the divisions and the leaflets stalked; petioles dilated at base. Flowers in corymbs or panicles, often polygamous or dioecious. (A Greek name of an unknown plant, mentioned by Dioscorides.)

Flowers dioecious or polygamous.

Achenes sessile or subsessile, thin-walled, the ribs often connected by transverse reticulations; leaves 3-4-ternate.

Filaments capillary, soon drooping; petioles of the stem-leaves well developed; vernal.

T. dioicum L. (EARLY M.) Smooth and pale or glaucous, 3-6 dm. high; leaves (2-3) all with general petioles; leaflets thin, light green, drooping, suborbicular, 3-7-lobed; flowers dioecious; sepals purplish or greenish white. — Rocky woods, etc., centr. Me., westw. and southw., common. Apr., May.

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Ferdinand Schuyler Mathews gives us this description in his Field Book of American Wild Flowers:

“A beautiful but not showy, slender meadow rue with the staminate and pistillate flowers on separate plants. The bluish olive green leaves lustreless, compound, and thinly spreading; the drooping staminate flowers with generally four small green sepals, and long stamens tipped with terracotta, and finally madder purple. The pistillate flowers inconspicuously pale green. An airy and graceful species, common in thin woodlands. 1-2 feet high. Me., south to Ala., and west to Mo., S. Dak., and Kan.

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Ellen Miller and Margaret Christine Whiting give us this fuller description in Wild Flowers of the North-Eastern States (1895):

“Found in rocky woods and hillsides during April and May.

“The branching leafy stalk grows from 1 to 2 feet high; smooth, round, and fine of fibre though strong; in color, green.

“The leaf is 3 or 4 times divided, terminating in groups of 3 leaflets on short slender stems; the leaflets are small, rounding, slightly heart-shaped at the base, and their margins are notched in rounded scallops; the texture is exceptionally fine and thin, the surface smooth; the color, a fine cool green.

“The flower is small and composed of 3 or 4 or 5 little, petal-like, pale green calyx-parts. Different plants bear the pistils and stamens; the flowers of the former are inconspicuous and sparse in comparison with those of the stamen-bearing plant: from these the many stamens, pale green faintly touched with tawny at the tips, droop on slender threads like little tassels. The flowers grow in loose clusters, on branching stems that spring from the leaf-joints.

“The Early Meadow Rue is unobtrusive in color and form, but most graceful in gesture, and fine in the texture and finish of all its parts; the leafage has a fern-like delicacy, and the flower tassels of the stamen-bearing plant are airily poised.”