Buttercups

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Buttercups are also known as Ranunculus repens which is their Latin name.

Plants have latin names because this makes their names universal.

Latin names enable plants to have the same name throughout the world.

In other words, Ranunculus repens is the same everywhere whereas buttercup is only known as such if you know the English language.

There are about two hundred to six hundred species of buttercup and although they are beautiful they are known to be poisonous to humans and cattle – so don’t eat them.

Buttercups have many talents, one of which is to grow fast.

The buttercup has an amazing root system.

They send out their roots – called runners and these runners creep under the grass in meadows and lawns or in the hedgerows at the side of the road.

This is why you will see so many buttercups on an uncut lawn.

You will see buttercups in many places, not just in meadows and fields or parks or gardens.

In fact, you can often see them growing on traffic islands or alongside walls or building sites in cities.

If you keep an eye out for them you will start to see buttercups everywhere.

BUTTERCUPS – MYTHS AND LEGENDS

Do you like Butter?

Did you know that if you place a buttercup under someone’s chin you can tell if they like butter or not?

If they like butter you can see yellow under the person’s chin.

Well, that may be more to do with the fact that strong bright colour of the buttercup’s shiny petals is reflected on to the skin but it’s a nice game to play.

There are many stories and legends associated with buttercups but my favourite is the Miser and the Fairies.

THE MISER AND THE FAIRIES

Long ago there lived a very old man.

This old man loved money and was so mean that he wouldn’t spend money on a barber or scissors.

He let his hair and beard grow so long it trailed along the ground as he walked.

Sometimes he even tripped over his beard but he didn’t care. He still wouldn’t spend money on scissors no matter how many times he fell over it.

He wouldn’t eat more than one egg, one crust of bread, one carrot and one apple each day so that he could save money to get more gold.

This old man loved gold and had collected so much of it that his house was full.

He could hardly get inside his own front door. He had to squeeze in past the piles of gold. His bed was so full of gold he couldn’t sleep.

Still, it wasn’t enough for him and one day he went out and got more gold.

He was crossing a meadow with a huge sack of gold when a group of fairies noticed his long hair and beard trailing in the distance.

Curious, they flew closer and saw that his sack was full to the top of shiny gold coins.

Just that day the fairies had been building a house.

The house was round so they were looking for something to make a round roof.

They decided that a gold coin would make a perfect roof for their house.

They told the old man that if they gave him just one shiny coin they would carry all the gold for him and place it in his house.

They also promised him good luck forever.

But the old man said no and shooed the fairies away.

As he shouted at the fairies his long hair flew about in the wind. The poor fairies had to jump up and down to stop themselves from tripping up over its stringy ends.

The fairies weren’t angry but they saw that the old man needed to learn a lesson about greed.

So they found a long sharp blade of grass and cut a hole in the old man’s sack.

Then with a quick flick of their magic wands, they turned the gold into buttercups.

As the old man walked across the meadow the buttercups tumbled out of his sack and a fairy wind came and blew them all around.

Soon the meadow was yellow with buttercups and all the gold was gone.

The fairies made a roof for their house from buttercups and they all agreed that the buttercup roof was more beautiful than gold.

I hope you enjoyed reading about Buttercups.

Best wishes

Grace

All the stories and photographs you find on this site are free because the aim of Ballyyahoo is to encourage children to love nature.

If you and your children enjoy the site and want to support Ballyyahoo, the best way to do that is to buy one of the Ballyyahoo books.

Maggie Many Cats and Other Stories is a complete collection of Ballyyahoo stories.