A little bit of butter in your lawn

I’m always mindful in these blogs that those of you who live in the north are going to have some different wildlife visit your outside space and different types of plant you can grow than those in the south, and likewise east and west, high and low, urban and rural. There will be plenty of crossover, but also some big differences.

So, I’m pleased to say that today’s topic is very much for everyone – the buttercup. There must be very few garden lawns or road verges across the whole country, from Lands End to the tip of Shetland, that don’t have this simple golden flower somewhere in them.

As a child, growing up in a small village, I remember us picking the flowers and holding them under each other’s chins. (Did I mention, it was a very small village, so our pleasures were simple?!). If the skin under your chin glowed yellow, it was proof you liked butter; and the technique 'proved' that every child did indeed like butter!

Right now in June, it is buttercup season, and they are beginning to polka-dot my Square Meadow (which is the grand name for the little patch outside my lounge window I converted from bog-standard lawn).

There are actually several species of buttercup. The commonest one in gardens is the Creeping Buttercup, which spreads via low-growing runners and in doing so manages to outfox the mower. But my buttercups are something different.

The first - and prominent in the photo above - is the Meadow Buttercup. It is especially elegant, its flowers held up on slender stems above the swaying grasses. Its leaves are especially attractive, being palmate, meaning each one spreads like a hand in five sections.

The Bulbous Buttercup is generally not quite so tall, and likes well drained soils. To identify it, look behind a flower - its sepals (which look like little leaves at the back of the petals) fold back instead of supporting the petals (below). This one is growing in my Square Meadow, too.

So, what wildlife will you find visiting buttercup flowers? The answer is actually not that much. Buttercups help illustrate the evolutionary battle that plants have been waging over the eons. One the one hand, they want to attract pollinators with gifts of nectar and pollen, but on the other they don't want it all scoffed by food thieves who don't actually help with pollination.

To deter the latter, buttercups contain a compound called ranunculin, which is rather acrid, and is why cows also tend to avoid eating them. (Buttercups aren’t the reason why butter is yellow, as was once thought!).

But it does mean that buttercups aren’t thronged with insect visitors. In my garden, I do see some leafcutter bees popping from flower to flower, but not many. However, in the southern half of the UK there is one bee that is a buttercup specialist, the rather endearingly-named Sleepy Carpenter Bee. It feasts on buttercups, and buttercups only - I haven't seen it in my garden yet, but will keep looking.

But, irrespective of the number of pollinators, buttercups are a signal that an area of grass has been allowed to breathe and flower, with all the wildlife value that brings, so enjoy their good cheer and see if you can give them room to raise their heads in your garden.