United States / Grow / creeping buttercup

creeping buttercup

Ranunculus repens · Ranunculaceae · all Ranunculus records · also called Buttercup, creeping · Wikipedia

View Saved

Is this one for your yard?

Enter your ZIP to see whether this is legal to plant in your state, and whether it survives your winter.

Ranunculus repens has 2 prohibited legal-list rows for ME and MA in the regulatory record. Those state rules are distinct from its fire-source entry.

The brochure lists Buttercup, creeping among ground covers and perennials for use in Alaska, provided they are placed and maintained appropriately. That conditional source remains in the evidence table, without turning a single row into a broad recommendation. Its cited entry retains the original condition.

The ecological set separately records widespread-invasive status in Alaska and the lower 48, plus invasive status in Hawaii. The candidate page therefore remains limited evidence, with legal, ecological, and fire evidence kept in their own channels.

Form
groundcover
Mature height
~2 ft
Water need
moderate
Rated in
Alaska
On this lot

1. Fire evidence and conditions

Fire evidence
Mixed evidence — location does not change the cited classification.
Placement evidence
1 source placement record; source schemes remain separate.
Evidence regions
Alaska
Typed publication scope: 1 scope across 1 cited fire source
  • Protect Your Home from Wildfire — Fire Resistant Vegetation and Landscaping · Official scoped edition
    • AK; partial normalized coverage · 2005-04-27

      Alaska Division of Forestry opens with the wildfire threat to Alaskans and publishes Alaska firewise-landscape examples. FireApproved publishes 58 exact source owners from its 60 taxon entries and holds the taxon-free fern label. State publication scope does not establish suitability for every Alaska climate, site, or home-ignition-zone placement.

2. Why this plant is relevant here

State distribution
Documented in AK, AL, AR, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KY, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, MS, MT, NC, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI, WV, WY.
Introduced / established
44 sourced range or established records. This is not an invasive warning.
USDA hardiness
Documented minimum 4a; no upper limit is documented.

3. Legal, ecological, and broader status

Legal-list status
2 legal-list records; the Place chip matches exact scope.
Reported invasive here
3 ecological invasive reports.
How to read this page

The status above is computed from the cited rows below: independent recommendations can support a fire-resistant result, an avoid row can produce keep-away, and disagreement stays visible as conflict. Placement notes preserve each source’s own scheme rather than translating unlike rules into one scale. This is evidence about a plant, not permission to plant it in every part of the defensible space; Zone 0 remains noncombustible.

Native and introduced range evidence

These are exact U.S. botanical-area records from the cited range source. Native and introduced describe biogeographic relationship, not fire performance or planting approval. Doubtful and extinct rows stay visible but do not count as current presence.

Current native

0

exact source areas

Current introduced

44

exact source areas

Qualified

0

doubtful or extinct source rows

44 introduced source areas · World Checklist of Vascular Plants, version 16 v16, as of 2026-06-04
  • Aleutian Is. (AK)
  • Alaska (AK)
  • Alabama (AL)
  • Arkansas (AR)
  • California (CA)
  • Colorado (CO)
  • Connecticut (CT)
  • District of Columbia (DC)
  • Delaware (DE)
  • Hawaii (HI)
  • Iowa (IA)
  • Idaho (ID)
  • Illinois (IL)
  • Indiana (IN)
  • Kentucky (KY)
  • Massachusetts (MA)
  • Maryland (MD)
  • Maine (ME)
  • Michigan (MI)
  • Minnesota (MN)
  • Missouri (MO)
  • Montana (MT)
  • North Carolina (NC)
  • Nebraska (NE)
  • New Hampshire (NH)
  • New Jersey (NJ)
  • New Mexico (NM)
  • Nevada (NV)
  • New York (NY)
  • Ohio (OH)
  • Oregon (OR)
  • Pennsylvania (PA)
  • Rhode I. (RI)
  • South Carolina (SC)
  • South Dakota (SD)
  • Tennessee (TN)
  • Texas (TX)
  • Utah (UT)
  • Virginia (VA)
  • Vermont (VT)
  • Washington (WA)
  • Wisconsin (WI)
  • West Virginia (WV)
  • Wyoming (WY)

The lossless worldwide derivative is retained once in the research corpus; object pages repeat only exact U.S. areas needed by the local lens. The JSON twin carries the same page assertions.

Plant hardiness evidence

These values describe the plant source. Your ZIP zone comes from the separate 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Whole-zone values stay whole-zone, and a single unresolved value is not treated as a tolerance range. Different source boundaries stay separate: overlapping statements are compared independently, while only ranges with no shared zone are called a conflict.

Where its sources say to plant it

Placement rules below use each source's own distances or named zones, tied to its rating. They are not interchangeable with the directory's current Zone 0 guidance.

The evidence

Grouped by what each source concluded. Primary evidence rated the plant itself (a lab, field program, or original curation); corroboration compiled or republished another source's rating and resolves to its root lineage.

Recommends (1)

Corroboration (1 rows from 1 source)
  • Protect Your Home from Wildfire — Fire Resistant Vegetation and Landscaping — Alaska Department of Natural Resources, Division of Forestry, Community Forestry Program · April 2005 · original source Corroboration Expert-curated lineage: unknown

    “Following are a few of the plants that may be used in firewise landscapes in Alaska if placed and maintained appropriately.”

    Listed as Buttercup, creeping — Ranunculus repens; the source conditions these examples on appropriate placement and maintenance.

Fire-resistant groundcovers instead

Last verified 2026-08-25. JSON (CC BY 4.0)

Profiles: USDA PLANTS · GBIF · iNaturalist · Wikidata · Wikipedia · ITIS

Ranunculus repens (Buttercup, creeping). FireApproved. https://fireapproved.com/plants/ranunculus-repens/. Last verified 2026-08-25.