Pygmy buttercup

Ranunculus pygmaeus, the pygmy buttercup, is a diminutive, tufted perennial herb of the Ranunculaceae with a circumboreal arctic-alpine distribution, occurring across Greenland, Iceland, arctic Eurasia and North America from Alaska and the Canadian Arctic south through the Rocky Mountains. It typically grows only 2-8 cm tall from short, fibrous-rooted rhizomes, forming low, mat-like tufts in snow-bed communities, wet alpine meadows, the margins of late-lying snow patches, and on damp, gravelly stream banks above treeline. The basal leaves are kidney-shaped to nearly orbicular, 3-10 mm wide, with three to five shallow rounded lobes, glabrous and somewhat fleshy; long-petioled, they are clustered at the base. Solitary, terminal flowers 4-7 mm across are borne on short, sparsely hairy scapes; each has five small, glossy bright-yellow petals barely exceeding the five hairy, greenish sepals, and numerous stamens around a dome of carpels. The fruit is a small, ovoid head 3-5 mm long of glabrous, beaked achenes. Like most buttercups, the fresh plant contains the acrid glycoside ranunculin and is mildly toxic.