Round-leaved Crowfoot - Ranunculus omiophyllus

The white flowers are typical of other Crowfoots. In Ranunculus omiophyllus they measure about 8 to 12 mm, the petals at least twice as long as the sepals. The leaf lobes are narrowed at the base.

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.

Photograph: 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. (RPR)

It grows in shallow water or on wet soil. Typical sites include the margins of ponds and ditches, flushes, damp depressions, gateways and tracks in pastures and on heathland, and the sheltered backwaters of rivers. Unlike Ranunculus hederaceus, it is confined to acidic, mesotrophic or oligotrophic soils.

Flowers April to August.

Annual or short-lived perennial.

Ranunculus omiophyllus remains frequent in W. Britain and S. Ireland, where there are many more records than there were in the 1962 BSBI Atlas. The decline at the fringes of its range was already discernible in the 1962 Atlas, and is now much more marked.

Scarce in Leicestershire and Rutland where it is almost confined to the Charnwood area. 

In the Flora of Leicestershire (Primavesi and Evans 1988) it was found in 8 of the 617 tetrads, but was not recorded in the Flora of Rutland (Messenger 1971).

It is listed as Scarce, in the current Checklist (Jeeves, 2011)

It is listed on the current VC55 Rare Plant Register (Hall and Woodward 2022) as Locally Scarce (i.e. present in 4-10 sites)