Spring at last?

During the last week, I walked the circuit up Glen Banchor and back by the Calder Path and - at last- found some plants flowering.  Until now, my main distraction has been spotting frogs and frog spawn in the patch of water by the old birches.
On the Calder path, there were patches of Celandines in the damp areas.  Their full name is Lesser Celandine.   They grow in damp places and can be seen along the Spey and near streams.   They are easily spread by the tuberous roots which are transported with soil and there is a good batch of them in the tub by the Newtonmore Village Hall!
The petals are shiny yellow and vary in number, but there are always 3 sepals.  The leaves are deep green and heart or kidney shaped.

Lesser celandine flowers

Lesser Celandine leaves

The scientific name has recently been changed from Ranunculus ficaria  to  Ficaria verna.  Ranunculus is the buttercup family and you can see the resemblance as they both have shiny yellow petals, but in fact they are different families (genera) hence the change of name. Verna means Spring. As for Ficaria,  I can't improve on the description given in the Oxford 400 Plants:

"The name Ficaria ('little figs') was first used for the lesser celandine by the early-sixteenth-century German botanist and theologian Otto Brunfels. Brunfels's Herbarum vivae eicones (1530-1536) has the twin distinctions of being one of the earliest botanical books to contain naturalistic illustrations and to be banned by the Vatican as heretical. Brunfels's 'little figs' are overwintering tubers at the plant's base. Under the Doctrine of Signatures these tubers were thought to resemble haemorrhoids, hence another of the plant's common names, pilewort."

The Oxford site is fascinating  - don't you want to know what use medieval beggars made of the plant?

Links
Oxford 400 Plants Ficaria verna