As I lean over the bridge’s parapet, a sudden slap draws my gaze upstream to a dark pool. All that’s left of the trout’s leap are a few bubbles encircled by slowly widening ripples. I look back to where the Six Mile Water river races across stony shallows. Waving languidly in the spate are long, emerald-green scarves of river water crowfoot, Ranunculus fluitans. Water crowfoots are a branch of the buttercup family. However, compared with its landlubber cousins, R. fluitans is another kind of being entirely – one that long ago made a completely different bargain with a changing world.
Most of our several species of water crowfoot have two types of leaf: hair-like ones that are submerged in water; and broad flat ones that float on the surface. The floating leaves betray the group’s terrestrial origins, and species like pond water crowfoot, R. peltatus use them as a raft for their flowers. However, the fast-water specialist R. fluitans has dispensed with floating leaves. Instead, like daisies woven through a girl’s long hair, its blooms emerge from the sinuous underwater leaves directly on to a river’s surface.
