Common Water-crowfoot - Ranunculus aquatilis

Water-crowfoots are a difficult group and expert help is often required to establish accurate identity of species. It has two kinds of leaves, floating and leaf-like ones with 3 to 7 shallow lobes, and submerged ones composed of numerous leafy segments. Flowers solitary, white.

Other Crowfoots

Ref. key in Stace.  The differences between species in this difficult subgenus are hard to tell from a photo.  Details of the flower petals and nectaries, and of the two types of leaf, are needed.  Capillary leaves are thread like, usually but not always submerged; and laminar are 'normal', usually floating or terrestrial, but not always.

Photographs: in habitat, of both kinds of leaf, and a close-up of flower.  Take a specimen, including both types of leaf, if present, and retain it until your record is verified; you may need to send the specimen to the County Recorder.  An explanation of how it fits the key in Stace is needed.

Shallow freshwater habitats, ponds, etc.

April to September.

Annual or perennial.

Fairly frequent throughout Britain, but scarcer in the North.

Fairly frequent in Leicestershire and Rutland but care has to be taken with identification as there are a number of very similar species. In the 1979 Flora survey of Leicestershire it was found in 75 of the 617 tetrads.  It is listed as Native and Occasional in the current Checklist (Jeeves, 2011)