Meadow Buttercup

A herbaceous perennial native to Eurasia with a circumpolar distribution, now naturalized across much of North America and established as a serious pasture weed in New Zealand, where some populations have developed herbicide resistance. It grows thirty to a hundred centimeters tall, with compound leaves of finely cut, hairy leaflets and glossy yellow flowers about 25 millimeters across, each with five overlapping petals above green sepals and numerous stamens. It typically grows in grazed or mown neutral grassland, occupying soils with drainage between the drier ground favored by related buttercups and the wetter ground favored by others.