Priority species healthcheck

Three-lobed Water-crowfoot
(Ranunculus tripartitus)

An attractive and diminutive water buttercup of wet, western heaths and rush-pastures.

This rare annual plant has very distinctive bronze-green leaves and tiny white flowers in early spring. It occurs on heathland and in rush-pastures, where it most often grows in shallow pools or puddles - or sometimes just in wet vehicle tracks or hoof prints - which generally dry up and disappear by summer.

These temporary heath pools are an internationally significant habitat for several other plants and animals such as lesser centaury, pillwort and southern damselfly but they are rare or uncommon outside the Atlantic fringe.

Wales represents one of the most northern extents of the global range of the three-lobed water-crowfoot. It has been found in a few coastal heaths in west Glamorgan, Pembrokeshire, south Ceredigion, Anglesey and the Lleyn but usually in small numbers and always very locally. It does, however, seem to have a persistent seed-bank and small - or occasionally lost - populations can often be restored by careful and appropriate management.

The conservation of three-lobed water-crowfoot is a major international responsibility for Wales. The habitat and associated species are globally restricted and there are relatively few groups of species where Wales hold such a large part of the world resource.