Plants in the family Ranunculaceae: white Helleborus niger; double red rose-like, and double pink and white Ranunculus hybrids; pink and creamy yellow Aquilegia (hybrid columbine); green and reddish gray hellebore hybrids; yellow winter aconite Eranthis hyemalis.

Do you remember when your childhood playmates held buttercups beneath each other’s chins? If the flower reflected yellow, and it always did, you loved butter. That shiny yellow flower shares its name with all kin in the buttercup family: Ranunculaceae.

There is another myth surrounding Ranunculaceae that tells of a Persian prince who was so beautiful everyone who saw him fell instantly in love. Besides his handsome features, he was said to have had an angelic voice. He sang as he wandered the countryside, delighting the fairies and wood nymphs. Too timid to declare his love for any of the nymphs, he died of shyness. A Ranunculus flower appeared where the prince fell dead.

Perhaps his voice was more like a croak, since the scientific name Ranunculus comes from the Latin for frog, rana. The name probably refers to the wet places where the amphibians live and many of these plants tend to grow.

In general, plants in this family like moist soil, but not all of them. For example, a sure way to dispatch cousin clematis is to grow it in wet ground. Most genera are herbaceous with soft tissues, but some clematis and yellowroot (Xanthorhiza simplicissima) are exceptions.

Like all plant families, the characteristics of the reproductive organs reveal the common connections. Many species have whorls of stigmas with pollen-bearing anthers. Others like columbines (Aquilegia) have spurred nectaries that coevolved with pollinators like the butterflies that unwind long proboscises to reach a sweet reward.

According to the Doctrine of Signatures, plants that have medicinal benefits to us humans were once thought to resemble the parts of the body they helped. So Hepatica, which has leaves shaped like a liver, has been commonly known as liverwort since the Middle Ages. (Wort means plant. Hep appears in words relating to the liver, like hepatitis.) But be warned: Plants in the Ranunculaceae family contain the skin irritant pentadienoic lactone, and some may have toxic alkaloids and glycosides. Although poisonous to humans, they do have a benefit to gardeners, since many of the plants in the family are resistant to deer damage.

Members of the family bloom from mid-winter to autumn. Hellebores, winter aconite (Eranthis spp.), and pheasant’s eye (Adonis vernalis) are among the earliest to show. Some of the last to flower are pink or white Japanese anemones with blossoms on tall stems that flutter like butterflies as the tree leaves above them begin to turn.

Rarely grown are the magnificent Japanese wood poppies— Glaucidium palmatum and the white form Glaucidium palmatum f. leucanthum— delicate gems of the forest floor.

Columbines, including the colorful hybrids, are Ranunculaceae family members. Aquilegia canadensis (red flowers) is a North American species that grows from Texas east to Florida, north through Quebec, and west to Saskatchewan.