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Buttercup   Listen
noun
Buttercup  n.  (Bot.) A plant of the genus Ranunculus, or crowfoot, particularly Ranunculus bulbosus, with bright yellow flowers; called also butterflower, golden cup, and kingcup. It is the cuckoobud of Shakespeare.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Buttercup" Quotes from Famous Books



... himself to look back, along the field-path. It was a dewy May evening after rain, and the hawthorn was all in bloom, and the leaves shaking out their crumpled flags of tender green. The blackbird was singing as he only sings after rain, and the fields were covered with the gold and silver dust of buttercup and daisy. It was sad to see the poor fellow going away at such a time, and from a place where every one knew and was kind to him, to an unknown world that might be very cruel. Once again as we watched him we anathematised the emigration ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan

... print the lea, In freak and dance around the tree, Or at the mushroom board to sup, And drink the dew from the buttercup;— A scene of sorrow waits them now, For an Ouphe has broken his vestal vow; He has loved an earthly maid, And left for her his woodland shade; He has lain upon her lip of dew, And sunned him in her eye of blue, Fann'd her cheek with his wing of air, Played in the ringlets of her hair, And, ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake

... least very much furthered by them. If the leaves of many water-plants are thread-like or assume the form of antlers, we are inclined to attribute it to lack of complete anastomosis. The growth of the water buttercup, Ranunculus aquatilis, shows this quite obviously, with its aquatic leaves consisting of mere thread-like veins, while in the leaves developed above water the anastomosis is complete and a connected plane is formed. Occasionally, indeed, in this plant, the transition ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... bread as we daily tread Country lane and city street, Let us kneel and pray on the broad highway To the saint with the vagrant feet. Our altar light is a buttercup bright, And our shrine is a bank of sod, But still we share St. Alexis' ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer

... don't see how you know whether you like it or not," Betsy observed, "unless you've looked into a buttercup ...
— The Tale of Betsy Butterfly - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... or pink or spotted. The golden one I have not yet dared to buy. They are most beautiful. I like both the red and the yellow tritoma; we have both. But I don't think we have the perfume of the English flowers, and I miss the clover and buttercup. And what would I give for an old-fashioned cabbage rose, as big as a saucer, and for fresh violets, which grow here but have little scent, and lilies of the valley! Still more, fancy seeing a Devonshire bank ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... what a flower really is. Take, for example, a buttercup, cotton, tobacco, or plum blossom (see Figs. 31 and 32). You will find on the outside a row of green leaves inclosing the flower when it is still a bud. These leaves are the sepals. Next on the inside is a row of colored leaves, or petals. ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... our latitude, the pledge of May. It comes when the grass is short, and the fresh turf sets off its "ring of gold" with admirable effect; hence we know the poet is a month or more out of the season when, in "Al Fresco," he makes it bloom with the buttercup and the clover:— ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... the flowers," said the fairy queen. "In every blade and in every bud lie hidden notes of fairy music. Each violet and daisy and buttercup,—every modest wild-flower (no matter how hidden) gives glad response to the tinkle of fairy feet. Dancing daintily over this quiet sward where flowers dot the green, my little people strike ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field

... early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup; But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... cleared at this, and she laughed with satisfaction. When I blurted out something about having once run off to a shop parlour, before I came to Aunt, for a peep at a full-length glass, she laughed again at the confession and called me "a buttercup, a ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... care two cents for your wonder-child! Your own little buttercup,—your daffy-downdilly baby!" she cried, in pretended reproof, and then Farnsworth took Fleurette and tossed her about ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells

... forget-me-not and yellow anemone had left their fairy haunts, and there remained only the curving fantastic fronds of the fern,—the dragon-grass. Then had come brilliant spots and splashes of color on the summer slopes—purple butterwort, golden ragweed, aconite, buttercup, deep crimson mossy patches of saxifrage, rosy heather, catchfly, wild geranium, cinnamon rose. These also finished their triumphal procession and went to their Valhalla. Then one September morning ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... appetite the unhappy mate made David cook an omelet and bake a seed-cake, the latter so richly compounded that it opened to the knife like a freckled buttercup. With the same object he stuck night-lines into the banks of the mill-pond, and drew up next morning a family of fat eels, some of which were skinned and prepared for his breakfast. They were his favourite fish, but such had been his condition ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... sexes must not be taught in one room to discard such ugly and inexpressive terms as snow-drop, meadow-sweet, heart's-ease, fever-few, cowslip, etc., and learn to know the cowslip as Primula veris—by class, Pentandria monogynia; and the buttercup as Ranunculus acnis—Polyandria monogynia; the snow-drop as Galanthus nivalis—Hexandria monogynia; and the meadow-sweet as Ulnaria; the heart's ease as Viola tricolor; and the ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... pleasant, on Sunday, to see them, with their father and mother, follow the old gentleman respectfully at a distance, through the avenue of elms to church, with their small, solemn faces, just now and then slightly nodding to a buttercup and snatching it up; while he, with me and his three-cornered hat on his head, and his gold-headed cane in his hand, and his light drab suit of clothes, all his dress of the same cloth, and his shoes with gold buckles, strode ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen

... hands. A poppy piped, a bramble played the concertina, and a lilac grew desperately jealous of me and tried to claw my hair. Then the dancing ceased, and I found myself in the midst of bluebells that shook their bells at me with loud trills of laughter. And out from among them, came a buttercup, pointing its yellow head at me. 'See! see,' it cried, 'what Gladys is carrying behind her. Naughty Gladys!' And trees and flowers—everything around me—shook with laughter. Then I grew hot and cold all over, and did not know which way to look for my confusion, till a willow, having ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... their own cows. He could shut his eyes and see how each one looked. Clover was red, Teenie black, and Buttercup had white spots on ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay

... almost more than semi-detached. It had been but lightly wedged between two buttercup stalks. The two eggs in it were at once unseated, and one was broken. Sarah Brown was ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... her baby house and throw away her doll in a month or two more. Sweet Fern has learned to read and write, and has put on a jacket and pair of pantaloons—all of which improvements I am sorry for. Squash Blossom, Blue Eye, Plantain, and Buttercup have had the scarlet fever, but came easily through it. Huckleberry, Milkweed, and Dandelion were attacked with the whooping cough, but bore it bravely, and kept out of doors whenever the sun shone. Cowslip, during the autumn, had either ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Buttercup shone so gaily, and looked back at Gerda. What song might the Buttercup sing? It ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... elegant person, such as he had long been on the look-out for, seemed as far off as ever. On the afternoon of the fifth day, as he was taking a solitary stroll about the country, having about made up his mind to be off to town, just as he was crossing Jog's buttercup meadow on his way to the stable, a rapid bang! bang! caused him to start, and, looking over the hedge, he saw a brawny-looking sportsman in brown reloading his gun, with a brace of liver-and-white setters crouching like statues ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... improvidence they indulge it, careless of consequences. Fortunate for them is it that their summer, is a short one, and the parwong not abundant, or cholera might be added to the other dangers of Arctic residence. But the days of the buttercup and the daisy, and of the butterfly and the mosquito are few. With the winter comes the all-pervading snow, and the keen, bracing north-west wind, the rosy cheek and the frozen nose; but with it also comes rugged health and a steady diet ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... the lacteal yield, And churns clank o' night at Vauxhall, Who dreams with delight of the buttercup'd field, Or Dun Suke ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various

... BUTTERCUP, a name applied to several species of the genus Ranunculus (q.v.), characterized by their deeply-cut leaves and yellow, broadly cup-shaped flowers. Ranunculus acris and R. bulbosus are erect, hairy meadow plants, the latter having the stem swollen ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... the tree, and now crept out again to adorn the summer. The long loops of the laburnum hung heavy with gold towards the sod below; and the air was full of the fragrance of the young leaves of the limes. Down in the valley below, the daisies shone in all the meadows, varied with the buttercup and the celandine; while in damp places grew large pimpernels, and along the sides of the river, the meadow-sweet stood amongst the reeds at the very edge of the water, breathing out the odours of dreamful ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... who had flown too high, And felt a little lazy, Was resting near a buttercup Who ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various

... on down the hill, his eyes roaming vaguely over the landscape, which was looking its fairest on this mellow June afternoon. Yonder rolled the downs, all golden green in the light of the sinking sun, nearer at hand lay the meadows, very sheets of buttercup gold; every leaf and twig of the hedgerow was a-glitter, too—all Nature, it seemed, had arrayed itself in splendour to correspond with the old pauper's sudden access of wealth. Not that any such fancy crossed his dazed mind. As he shuffled along ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)

... of our beliefs seem to be peculiarly indubitable. One might instance the belief that two and two are four, that two things cannot be in the same place at the same time, nor one thing in two places, or that a particular buttercup that we are seeing is yellow. The suggestion we are to examine is that such: beliefs have some recognizable quality which secures their truth, and the truth of whatever is deduced from them according to self-evident principles ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... little puppy it was!" said Alice, as she leaned against a buttercup to rest herself, and fanned herself with one of the leaves. "I should have liked teaching it tricks very much, if—if I'd only been the right size to do it! Oh dear! I'd nearly forgotten that I've got to grow up again! Let me see—how is it to be managed? I suppose I ought ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... angel took it, and kissed the child, and the little one half opened his eyes. They plucked some of the rich flowers, but also took with them the despised buttercup and the ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... production of eggs, especially if hot caviare is afterwards administered in large bowls. Then there would be the first chapters of an enthralling serial whose plot revolved round the love-story of Sir Robert Wyandotte and Lady Cecilia Buttercup—a literary effort of unparalleled brilliancy due to the genius of a new novelist who preferred to be known as the Red Rover of Rhode Island. And so on and so on. If you think the scheme is feasible, let me hear from you and I will begin to get my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various

... said, 'in dread for you. You have everything before you, everything, and then one day you will fall in love and your genius will be laid at the feet of some fool who will trample it under foot as a cow treads on a beautiful buttercup.' ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... hummed and buzzed in the hedge as I got ready for work, importuning the flowers for that which he could not carry, and finally giving up the attempt in despair fell asleep on a buttercup, the best place for his weary little velvet body. In five minutes—they may have been five hours to him—he awoke a new bee, sensible and clear-sighted, and flew blithely away to the hive with his sufficiency—an example this weary world ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... truth and an enemy of science. The answer is very brief; the poet does not imagine something which is not there. A beauty or a suggestion is a truth, and the poet sees a beauty or a suggestion. He would indeed be false and an enemy to science if he said that a primrose by the river's brim was a buttercup, or that it was red when it is yellow, but it is no fiction when he declares that the primrose tells him this or that of nature or of God. It may not tell the scientist anything of the kind, but that is because the scientist does not look for such a thing in it, does not understand ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... in every buttercup and every primrose, and every little daisy, and in every dewdrop, and heard something of the song of the angels in the notes of the nightingale and the skylark. Oh! Jesus was there, and they felt Him, and they saw Him. I took ...
— Your Boys • Gipsy Smith

... heart, as she rode. Among the dead leaves of the woods, the snowy blossoms of the blood-root had already burst forth in starry clusters; the anemones trembled between the sheltering knees of the old oaks, and here and there a single buttercup dropped its gold on the meadows. These things were so many presentiments of brighter days in Nature, and they awoke a corresponding faith in her ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... the old Squire had been breeding a herd of Jerseys. There were sixteen of them: Jersey First, Canary, Jersey Second, Little Queen, Beauty, Buttercup, and all the rest. Each one had her own little book that hung from its nail on a beam of the tie-up behind her stall. In it were recorded her pedigree, dates, and the number of pounds of milk she gave at each milking. The scales for weighing the milk hung from the same beam. We weighed ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... Mr Reilly?" asked the girl somewhat stiffly, for she had a suspicion of what was coming. A little negro girl in the back kitchen named Buttercup also had a suspicion of what was coming, and stationed herself with intense delight behind the door, through a crack in which she ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... It is as though the sun kisses Nature all the more lovingly, because he knows how short a time they have to be together, and as if they both, for the time, try to forget that they must part so soon. Then the hill grows green as if by a sudden miracle, and the bluebell, the dandelion, the buttercup, the dog-daisy, the wild rose, the raspberry and the strawberry spring up in lavish abundance, by every brook, on every hillock, on every mountain-slope; then hundreds of insects hum in the grass as in a tropical land; then cows, horses, and sheep are driven up the ...
— The Visionary - Pictures From Nordland • Jonas Lie

... life has taught me, that the fundamental character of people is not greatly alterable, but that the alteration of their circumstances will certainly influence the effect and working of their capacities and instincts. The buttercup which is tall with a flower at the end of a high firm stalk and leaves with slender spike fingers, if it grows in an open meadow, becomes a stunted flower on a short stem, and its leaves form squat webs, in order to force its growth on a close-cropped lawn. The experience ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... buttercup green of the meadows, The snow of the blossoming may, Lovelier are not than the legions of children Magic hath ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare

... traced the road by asking, she had learnt the way to go; She had found the famous meadow—it was wrapped in cruel snow; Not a buttercup or daisy, not a single verdant blade Showed its head above its prison. Then she knelt her down ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... golden the buttercup blooms by the way, A song of the joyous ground; While the melody rained from yonder spray Is a blossom in fields ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... orange—of a hue more beautiful, I think, than the higher and more visible buttercup. A blackbird, gleaming, so black is he, splashing in the runlet of water across the gateway. A ruddy kingfisher swiftly drawing himself as you might draw a stroke with a pencil, over the surface of the yellow buttercups, and away above the hedge. Hart's-tongue fern, thick with ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies

... and want to have all the gibberish to yourself. That you should have it all to yourself in your own pulpit we accede to you; but out here, on the heath, surely I may have my turn. You do not believe in Rumtunshid? Then why should farmer Buttercup be called on to believe in the communion of the saints? What does he believe about it? Or why should you make little Flora Buttercup tell such a huge fib as to say, that she believes in the resurrection ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... can go, just as soon as you get the butter made. Now, hurry up, and let us get into the buttercup field, which is a whole lot nicer than the butter churn and— Oh! it smells much nicer, too. Why, Ruth, that cream ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson

... geranium. Great care should be taken, however, that it is a plant of the correct species, for in the etiquette of courtship all flowers have different meanings and many a promising affair has been ruined because a suitor sent his lady a buttercup, meaning "That's the last dance I'll ever take you to, you big cow," instead of a plant with a more tender significance. Some of the commoner flowers and their meaning in courtship are ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... a daisy-and-buttercup land, And thence thread a jungle of grass: Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand Above the ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... cobweb Stingy spun it was Greenie's business to fold and put away carefully in the centre of a buttercup. He would get it and be back before it was time for Stingy to dance. He measured his way quickly over to the buttercup, his little back fairly popped into the air every other half second as he went furiously humping ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks

... might, An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 40 And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, 45 The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, 50 And lets his illumined being o'errun With the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... become a listener and observer. In this divided attitude of mind his observation was chiefly engaged. He noted particularly the string of gold beads which Miss Wycliffe wore, and their reflection against her throat reminded him of a children's game, which consisted in holding a buttercup beneath the chin ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... Philip stole cautiously forward, cap in hand, and then made a dab down to secure the brightly-painted prize; but, with one or two flaps from those gorgeous wings, it was out of reach, over the palings, and away across the buttercup-gilded ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... religious newspaper. He selected a professional neckcloth, as spotlessly pure as if it had been washed in innocency, and adjusted it in a tie which was like the white rose of Sharon. Myrtle Hazard was, he thought, on the whole, the handsomest girl he had ever seen; Susan Posey was to her as a buttercup from the meadow is to a tiger-lily. He, knew the nature of the nervous disturbances through which she had been passing, and that she must be in a singularly impressible condition. He felt sure that he could establish intimate spiritual relations with her by drawing out her ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... "throuch" stone sustained the narrator, while the four disposed themselves on the sunny grass, in the various attitudes of severe inattention which youth assumes when listening to a story. Sweetheart pored into the depths of a buttercup. Hugh John scratched the freestone of a half-buried tomb with a nail till told to stop. Sir Toady Lion, having a "pinch-bug" coralled in his palms, sat regarding it cautiously between his thumbs. Only Maid Margaret, her dimpled chin on her knuckles, sat looking ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... solitary couples, protecting between them the slender stalk with its drooping yellow bell. Later in the season come the larger and more brilliantly tinted flowers, the wild purple larkspur, the great yellow buttercup, and the lilac flox. There were dusky depths in the wood, too, into which, book in hand, we sometimes retreated from the mid-summer heat into an atmosphere of moist and murky coolness. There we found the Indian pipe, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Fancy wandering about with a cow for your chaperon and the birds for critics, a rural pasture for your ball-room, a buttercup meadow for your lounge! How long shall ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham

... berberries (Berberideae); the custard-apples (Anonaceae); the magnolias (Magnoliaceae); and, finally, the great group (Ranunculaceae) containing the anemones, the clematis, hellebore, monkshood, and the buttercup, which last is of great use to the student of Botany because it is an excellent type of ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... moment of which we enjoyed. Grand Rapids Island is prodigal in wild flowers,—vetches, woodbine, purple and pink columbines, wild roses, several varieties of false Solomon's seal, our persisting friend dwarf cornel, and, treasure-trove, our first anemone,—that beautiful buttercup springing from ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... her native bole Coming at dusk, when the dim stars emerge, To a slow river at whose silent verge Tall poplars tremble and deep grasses roll, Come thou no less and, kneeling in a shoal Of the freaked flag and meadow buttercup, Bend till thine image from the pool beam up Arched with blue heaven like an aureole. See how adorable in fancy then Lives the fair face it mirrors even so, O thou whose beauty moving among men Is like the wind's way on the woods below, Filling all nature ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... Landing Stage under Margate Pier. Excursionists discovered embarking in two rival sailing-boats, the "Daisy" and the "Buttercup," whose respective Mates ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various

... there was some good fighting in the air, some of it at close quarters with collisions barely avoided. Twenty enemy machines were accounted for in the fighting, some flopping about until they broke up in the air and others being driven down on their noses in yellow buttercup fields so far back of the fighting line that no shell had ever marred ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... up, the moon is up! The larks begin to fly, And, like a drowsy buttercup, Dark Phoebus skims the sky, The elephant with cheerful voice, Sings blithely on the spray; The bats and beetles all rejoice, Then let me, too, ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith

... the boat must turn turtle, unless, by the blessing of the gods, the mast parts asunder—you look out through half-closed eyelids at a very beautiful coast. The waves dance, and glimmer, and shine in the sunlight, the long stretch of sand is yellow as a buttercup, and the fringes of graceful casuarina trees quiver like aspens in the breeze, and shimmer in the heat haze. The wash of the waves against the boat's side, and the ripple of the bow make music in your drowsy ears, and, as you glide through cluster ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... Buttercup, n. The familiar English flower is represented in Australia and Tasmania by various species of Ranunculus, such as R. lappaceus, Sm., ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... some of the travellers hesitated, slowed up, and finally stood quite still. He saw that the tall beech tree stopped, and that the roebuck and the wheat blade tarried by the wayside, likewise the blackberry bush, the little yellow buttercup, the ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... her on the dusty street, And daisies spring about her feet; Or, touched to life beneath her tread, An English cowslip lifts its head; And, as to do her grace, rise up The primrose and the buttercup! I roam with her through fields of cane, And seem to stroll an English lane, Which, white with blossoms of the May, Spreads its green carpet in her way! As fancy wills, the path beneath Is golden gorse, or purple heath; And now we hear in woodlands ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... would have struck terror to the sad-eyed aesthete, but an artist who liked to see colors burn and glow on the canvas would have been glad to paint her: a little frock of buttercup yellow calico, bare neck and arms, full of dimples, hair that put the yellow calico to shame by reason of its tinge of copper, skin of roses and milk that dared the microscope, red smiling lips, one stocking and ankle-tie kicked off and five pink toes calling for some silly woman ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... asking, do I remember, remember The buttercup bog-end where the flowers rose up And kindled you over deep with a coat of gold? You ask again, do the healing days close up The open darkness which then drew us in, The dark that swallows all, and nought ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington

... to botanizing. She never got much farther than recognizing the tiger lily and the wild rose, but she rediscovered Hugh. "What does the buttercup say, mummy?" he cried, his hand full of straggly grasses, his cheek gilded with pollen. She knelt to embrace him; she affirmed that he made life more than full; she was altogether reconciled . . . for ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... morning in the month of July. Outside, and far up overhead, a dappled sky shining down on a world of light and beauty; green verdant slopes and wide sweeps of meadowland glistening still with the early dew; flowers blossoming everywhere, from the modest daisy and golden buttercup to the queenliest rose and fairest lily; birds singing from every bush and tree their morning trill of flute-like melody; bees humming busily hither and thither; butterflies flitting idly by or resting snugly in the heart of a flower; in short, the world ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont

... want to keep it quiet if we can. Look at the large facts—the big bones of the case. I believe those scientific gentlemen have made a highly scientific mistake. I believe Smith is as blameless as a buttercup. I admit buttercups don't often let off loaded pistols in private houses; I admit there is something demanding explanation. But I am morally certain there's some blunder, or some joke, or some allegory, or some accident behind all this. Well, suppose I'm wrong. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... existence of flowers such as the violet, the buttercup, and the honeysuckle in an island south of the equator, and surrounded by vegetation of a totally different order, appeared to be so inexplicable that the hypothesis of a separate and distinct origin was advanced. A more satisfactory explanation has, however, been furnished by Darwin, which ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... sight of the supper set before him softened Gallito's harsh face. Brook trout, freshly caught that afternoon from the rushing mountain stream not far away from the cabin, and smoking hot from the frying pan; an omelette, golden brown and buttercup yellow, of a fluff, a fragrance, with savories hidden beneath its surface, a conserve of fruits, luscious, amber and subtly biting, the coffee of dreams and a bottle of ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... you that Buttercup (the spotted cow with one horn, Mother of Lesbia) has done a disgraceful thing. She got into the orchard Friday evening and ate apples under the trees, and ate and ate until they went to her head. For two days she has been perfectly ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... a buttercup and bit off the stem. With the blossom between his teeth he surveyed the sky, the river, the forest, and then the ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... be the forest, And he can be the sun, Or a buttercup, or an hour of rest When the weary day ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer

... distinguished masculine figures was Hiawatha, the Indian lad. His face was made up with real skill, and his bow and quiver hung gracefully at his back as he strode about. He had not danced, but he was evidently having a most delightful time with the Moon figure and Buttercup. ...
— The Motor Girls • Margaret Penrose

... Buttercup, Tall Crowfoot or Cuckoo Flower; Tall Meadow Rue; Liver-leaf, Hepatica, Liverwort or Squirrel Cup; Wood Anemone or Wind Flower; Virgin's Bower, Virginia Clematis or Old Man's Beard; Marsh Marigold, Meadow-gowan or American Cowslip; ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... likes the field blossoms best," remarked Cleo. "I suppose if we opened a window he would turn his back on all this vain-glory, and float away to a roadside buttercup." ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... head, and standing wringing his hands 'cause the prize roses have got bugs on 'em he sets to work and kills the bugs; sprays the plants same's he would ordinary bushes, and they go to growing again like any other civilized flowers. An orchid ain't no more to him than a buttercup. He's too used to 'em. He's used to dogs as well, and with the shifting fashions he's seen during his fifty years with the family he's had experience with most every kind of dog that ever was. For there's fashions in dogs, ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... helped Pirlaps to set a dainty little round table (not at all like a multiplication table) with pink shell dishes, and put on a jar of honeysuckle honey and a pat of buttercup butter. Then Avrillia baked the waffles and they sat ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker

... they were at their widest, then drew toward each other with no break in their symmetry; they did not close. Above was, roughly, a ten-foot rift, ragged edged, through which poured light like that in the heart of pale amber, a buttercup light shot through with curiously evanescent ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... to me. I could be of a mind with your Puritan, positively. If I allow it, so innocent a creature in the atmosphere of a place like this must suffer some corruption. You should know that the station I took her from was . . . it was modest. She was absolutely a buttercup of the fields. She has had various masters. She dances . . . she dances prettily, I could say bewitchingly. And so she is now for airing her accomplishments: such ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... All of them fairly hug the ground. There are other plants that form a carpet of foliage, but the flower stalks rise higher. These include white rock cress (Arabis albida), the permissible double buttercup (Ranunculus acris fl. pl.), the also permissible double German catchfly (Lychnis viscaria), another double flower, "fair maids of France" (Ranunculus aconitifolius), Carpathian bellflower (Campanula Carpatica), grass pink (Dianthus plumarius), Iris ...
— Making A Rock Garden • Henry Sherman Adams

... Her muzzle is too blunt; then she does not bite as do the sheep; she has not upper teeth; she crops. But on the lower slopes, and margins, and rich bottoms, she is at home. Where the daisy and the buttercup and clover bloom, and where corn will grow, is her proper domain. The agriculture of no country can long thrive without her. Not only a large part of the real, but much of the potential wealth of the land is ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... Columbine, and Clownish fun with Pantaloonish wisdom and chuckles. When you were young, you used, I think, to enjoy a butterfly's kiss; and that, you remember, was when your mother brushed your cheek with her eye-lashes. And also when you were young you held a buttercup under other children's chins to see if they liked butter, and they always did, and the golden glow showed and the world was glad. And you held a shell to your ear to hear the sound of the sea, and when it rained, you pressed your nose against the window-pane until it looked flat and white ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker

... their odder umbrellas in the hall. It is amazingly pleasant to meet the same little face on the lawn, and to see it blooming with new life at the touch of freedom and fresh air. It blooms with a sense of individuality, a sense of power. In the town the buttercup was nobody, silent, unnoticed, lost in the bustle and splendour of elder sisterdom. Here among the fields and the hedges she is queen. Her very laugh, the reckless shout that calls for mamma's frown and dooms the governess to a headache, rings ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... that it could be kept from the two would-be murderers for a long time that he was still in existence; but he thought that, by keeping out of sight, he might puzzle them as to his intentions, and perhaps frighten them away from Buttercup. ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various

... like one luminous ghost: and buttercup, daisy, snowdrop, primrose gathered Margaret, vagrant, flighty, light to the winds that wafted her as fluff, and tossed them suddenly aloft, and back they came to be tangled in her bare hair; and now she was a tipsy ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... of the valley, from the river to the mountains that girdled it in, were carpeted all by a soft green grass, thick, short, perfectly even, and vanilla-perfumed, but so besprinkled throughout with the yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purple violet, and the ruby-red asphodel, that its exceeding beauty spoke to our hearts in loud tones, of the love and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... said John, "I recollect you called me a cool and calculating Englishman. I shall take you down to the lake, where it will be cool, and there I shall find a Smorblomst, or a buttercup, and by placing it to your chin, I shall be able to calculate the transparency of your complexion from ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary

... bright yellow buttercup-looking flowers, are now in full luxuriance of bloom in wet places near running water; they may not be esteemed beautiful by all, and yet all God's works, and all his flowers, are good and beautiful. Let any one ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... Nitella is another pleasing variety. The Ranunculus aquatilis, or Water-Crowfoot, is to be found in almost every pond in bloom by the middle of May, and continues so into the autumn. It is of the buttercup family, and may be known as a white buttercup with a yellow centre. The floating leaves are fleshy; the lower ones finely cut. It must be very carefully washed, and planted from a good joint, allowing length enough of stem to reach the surface. Some of the blossom-heads may also be sprinkled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... simply to put some sheets of writing-paper in the fire, all of them and Tangle-wood itself would turn into cinders and vanish in smoke up the chimney—even the present chronicler saw the point; though, at the same time, he somehow could not help believing in the reality of Primrose, Buttercup, Dandelion, Squash-blossom, and the rest. Thus early did he begin to grasp the philosophy ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... little maid-servant, had come to pay her a short visit, and she kissed her. There was gold, heart's gold, in the kiss. Gold on the lips, gold on the ground, and gold above, in the early morning beams! Now that is my little story,' said the buttercup. ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... type may become a vegetative variety, and be multiplied by bulbs, buds or cuttings, etc. Some cultivated anemones and crowfoots (Ranunculus) are of this character, and even the marsh-marigold (Caltha palustris) has a petalomanous variety. I once found in a meadow such a form of the meadow-buttercup (Ranunculus acris), and succeeded in keeping it in my garden for several years, but it did not make seeds and finally died. Camellias are known to have both types of double flowers. The petalomanous type is highly regular in structure, ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... Peter, then a crowing baby, in her lap. Gilbert was tickling Peter's chin with a buttercup, Nancy was putting a wreath of leaves on her mother's hair, and Kathleen was swinging from an apple-tree bough, her yellow ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... and regular types of flowers, as in the buttercup, we pass on to more and more involved and unsymmetrical forms, as the columbine, monk's-hood, larkspur, aristolochia, and thus finally to the most highly specialized or involved forms of all, as seen ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... 'Phys Veget.,' t. iv, p. 426. The same author also cites Romer as having found two plants of Ranunculus, from the stem of which emerged a daisy. As it is not an uncommon practice to stick a daisy on a buttercup, it is to be hoped no hoax was played off on ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters

... a little thing like wet feet would stop me from getting into the game?" he answered. "And you called me a sturdy oak! Who is the little buttercup?" he added, looking at the child whose shock of bright golden curls made his nickname ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... the gay young fellows forgot they were in the presence of ladies, they laughed so loud, and talked so much nonsense, and one of them came very near upsetting the table at which he sat, spilling his buttercup of dew all over the new gossamer dress of Lilliebelle, who ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow

... thistle, Gill, Canada thistle, Nightshade, Burdock, Buttercup, Yellow dock, Dandelion, Wild carrot, Wild mustard, Ox-eye daisy, Shepherd's purse, Chamomile, St. John's-wort, Mullein, Chickweed, Dead-nettle (Lamium), Purslane, Hemp-nettle (Galeopsis), Mallow, Elecampane, Darnel, Plantain, Poison hemlock, Motherwort, Hop-clover, Stramonium, Yarrow, ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... be wide-awake and up, In dainty robes arrayed, Blue violet, gold buttercup, And quaker-lady staid. Wild eglantine and clustering thorn Will grace the byway lanes, Whilst woodland flowers the dells adorn And daisies cheer ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass

... moraine and over the sparse turf of these highest regions of life. Everywhere was a profusion of gentians, the larger and darker, as well as the smaller, bluest of all blue flowers. The large, plump, yellow globe-flowers (Trollius), the sulphur-yellow anemone, the glacial white-and-pink buttercup, the Alpine dryad, the Alpine forget-me-nots and pink primroses, the summer crocus, delicate hare-bells, and many other flowers of goodly size were abundant. The grass of Parnassus and the edelweiss were not yet in flower, but lower down the slopes the ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... her wings, As through the glade, dark in the dim, she flew; Yet still the Pedlar his old burden sings,— 'What, pretty sweetheart, shall I show to you? Here's orange ribands, here's a string of pearls, Here's silk of buttercup and pansy glove, A pin of tortoiseshell for windy curls, A box of silver, scented sweet with clove: Come now,' he says, with dim and lifted face, 'I pass not ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare

... Country Club course, also at Yonkers, had to keep moving to keep warm yesterday, but they played on greens which had been mowed only a few days ago, and those who were fond of flowers stopped now and then to pick a buttercup. ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... trees, hanging over the wooden palings on each side—suddenly the trees stopped on the left, and out one came on the top of the field sloping down to the south into Dulwich valley—open field animate with cow and buttercup, and below, the beautiful meadows and high avenues of Dulwich; and beyond, all that crescent of the Norwood hills; a footpath, entered by a turnstile, going down to the left, always so warm that invalids ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... everywhere: the gold of the heart in that holy kiss; it was a golden morning; there was gold in the beaming sunlight, gold in the leaves of the lowly flower, and on the lips of the maiden. There, that is my story," said the buttercup. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... was a white daisy, very frail and delicate on long thin stem with scarcely any leaves. Another was a yellow flower, with four petals, a pale miniature California poppy. Still another was a purple-red flower, almost as large as a buttercup, with dark green leaves. Last and tiniest of all were infinitely fragile pink and white blossoms, on very flat plants, smiling wanly up from ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... good thing," said Martin, twirling a buttercup as he swallowed his last crumb, "but I also like butter. Do ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... which lives outdoors must play most in the open, and in its noble park, with its vast stretches of bright green, here empurpled by masses of the dainty grass-flower, there yellowing with the sheen of the buttercup, one finds the tireless golf-players leisurely strolling over the links; from yonder come the cries of the boys at ball; and in the farther distance you may see through the frame-like branches of a giant live-oak the students of a great university hard set at a game of ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various

... sxargxo. bureau : oficejo, kontoro. burgess : burgxo. burn : brul'i, -igi. burrow : kavigi. burst : krevi. bury : enterigi, enfosi. business : afero, okupo, negoco busy : okupata, aferema. butcher : bucx'i, -isto. buttercup : ranunkolo, butterfly ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer

... instinct within it that reaches and towers, And, groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers; The flush of life may well be seen Thrilling back over hills and valleys; The cowslip startles in meadows green, The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice, And there's never a leaf nor a blade too mean To be some happy creature's palace; The little bird sits at his door in the sun, Atilt like a blossom among the leaves, And lets his illumined being o'errun With the deluge of summer it receives; ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... heralds on before: The bee rings out his bugle bold, The daisy spreads her marbled floor, The buttercup ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... BUTTERCUP or CROWFOOT - (R. sceleratus) Highly-polished petals, which spangle (R. acris) the fields and hedges with gold. (R. repens) All much alike; all haunting (R. bulbosus) kitchen-gardens and pastures, where the cattle, ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... I strove to pick them up, But stumbling forward, sunk, O'er the wild pea and buttercup, Across the ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... you," groaned the Goblin, and Davy, turning, saw a buttercup growing on a stem almost as tall as he was himself. He picked it, and hurried away across the meadow to look for water, the buttercup, meanwhile, growing in his hand in a surprising manner, until it became a full-sized teacup, with a handle conveniently growing on one side. Davy, however, ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl

... in their way, and end in a general stampede for underground retreats from the region poisoned by sunshine. NEXT YEAR you will find the grass growing tall and green where the stone lay; the ground-bird builds her nest where the beetle had his hole; the dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... stone-floored cottage. She was number one in the first place, which says a good deal, and she was an extremely healthy and satisfactory baby in herself—and altogether as sweet and fresh and loveable as a wee baby buttercup ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... they. Each hath some fond sweet office that doth strike One of our trembling heartstrings musical. Is not the hawthorn for the Queen of May? And cuckoo-flowers for whom the cuckoo's voice Hails, like an answering sister, to the woods? Is not the maiden blushing in the rose? Shall not the babe and buttercup rejoice, Twins in one meadow? Are not violets all By name or nature for the breast of Dames! For them the primrose, pale as star of prime, For them the wind-flower, trembling to a sigh, For them the dew stands in the eyes of day That blink in April on the daisied lea? Like them ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... the close fine grass! The pale-yellow rock cistus in clumps, the blue "shepherd's thyme" in tracts of colour, sweet little purple-capped orchids, spireas and burnets, and everywhere "the golden buttercup" in sheets of gleaming yellow, and the soft wind blows and blows, and the black-nosed sheep come up the leas, and I drink in the breeze! Oh, those flocks of black-faced lambs and sheep are TOO-TOO! and I must tell you ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden

... river-flooded fields, smelling of bonfires and wet earth. He took him through the seasons, telling him of the blown golden armies of the daffodils that marched out for Easter, and the fragrant white glory of the may; and the pale pink stars of the hedge-roses, and the yellow joy of buttercup fields wherein cows stand knee-deep and munch, in order to give Thomas ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay

... air unequally expanded, but "a veil of mystery hangs over the whole."[EN18] The valley-sides of dark trap were striped with white veins of heat-altered argil; the sole with black magnetic sand; and patches of the bed were buttercup-yellow with the Handn (dandelion), the Cytisus, and the Zaram (Panicum turgidum) loved by camels. Their jaundiced hue contrasted vividly with the red and mauve blossoms of the boragine El-Kahl, the ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... girl, lovely as a tea rose, stood doubtfully in the cedar-wood door, poised for flight either way, sucking in the dimple at the left of her mouth. Running at his call she flew into his arms and dropped her buttercup head on his shoulder. For the first time he smiled, and the wise wife slipped quietly away and watched them from the door, guessing at their murmurs, counting their kisses. Later ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... modifications. These have been of paramount importance on many lines of evolution of the animal as well as of the vegetable kingdom. It is often assumed that monocotyledons are descended from some lower group of dicotyledons, probably allied to that which includes the buttercup family. On this view the monocotyledons must be assumed to have lost the cambium and all its influence on secondary growth, the differentiation of the flower into calyx and corolla, the second cotyledon ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... lines are barely fifty yards apart, and at the present time the grass is hiding the enemy's trenches; to peep over the parapet gives one the impression of looking on a beautiful meadow splashed with daisy, buttercup, and poppy flower; the whole is a riot of colour—crimson, heliotrope, mauve, and green. What a change from some weeks ago! Then the place was littered with dead bodies, and limp, (p. 080) lifeless figures hung on to the barbed wire where they had ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... doctored them by a book I have. The only good veterinary doctor about here lives way over by Spring Hill, and it would take him a day to drive over and back, besides costing me about ten dollars. Still, I ought to get him. Buttercup is pretty sick," answered Sam, and I could see that his broad shoulders under his well-cut blue serge coat of last season seemed to sag with the weight of ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... in it, restrained by it, till the time of birth. The shell is hardly more subordinate to the germ in the egg, than the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at last; but it never lives as the corolla does. It may fall at the moment its task is fulfilled, as in the poppy; or wither gradually, as in the buttercup; or persist in a ligneous apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the rose; or harmonise itself so as to share in the aspect of the real flower, as in the lily; but it never shares in the corolla's bright passion of life. And the gradations which thus exist ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... the same way. It forms a large ball, and browner; dandelion seed-balls are white. The grass is dotted with them now; they give a glossy, silky appearance to the meadows. Tiny pink geranium flowers show on bunches of dusty grass; silver weed lays its yellow buttercup-like flower on the ground, placing it in the angle of the road and the sward, where the sward makes a ridge. Cockspur grass—three claws and a spur like a cock's foot—is already whitened with pollen; already in comparison, for the grasses are late to lift their heads this summer. As the petals ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... lively as riding elephants and playing with bears, but it is respectable; and I guess you'll be happier switching Brindle and Buttercup than being switched yourself," said Mrs. Moss, shaking her head at him ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... was a buttercup, Upon the mountain top, That you might sweetly pick me up, And sweetly let me drop. I wish I was a little worm, All rigling in the sun, That I myself towards thee might turn When thou along didst come. Oh, I wish I was a doormat, sweet, All prostrate on the floor, If only thou wouldst wipe ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... brooks a-babbling tell Where the cheery daisy grows, And where in meadow or woodland dwell The buttercup ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... Anneke and Saartje; which is Dutch for Kate, Annie and Sallie. These, their fond mother, who loved them dearly, called her "orange blossoms"; but when at dinner, Klaas would keep on, dipping his potatoes into the hot butter, while others were all through, his mother would laugh and call him her Buttercup. But always Klaas wanted more cheese. When unusually greedy, she twitted him as a boy "worse than Butter-and-Eggs"; that is, as troublesome as the yellow and white plant, called toad-flax, is to the farmer—very pretty, but nothing but ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis

... to Plum Corner in the garden without clinging to Amaryllis's arm, or staying to steady himself and get his balance more than three or four times. He had even ventured a little way up the meadow-path, but it made him giddy to stoop to pick a buttercup. They told him he was better; he could eat a very little more, and sip ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies

... you can only kick them all about in the air when you tumble? Legs are meant to walk with, you know. Now, don't be cross about it, and don't begin putting out your wings yet; I've some more to say. Go down to the frog that lives behind that buttercup—give him my compliments—Sylvie's ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... much that is interesting in the relations of one species to another. Many plants are parasitic upon others. The foliage of the Beech is so thick that scarcely anything will grow under it, except those spring plants, such as the Anemone and the Wood Buttercup or Goldilocks, which flower early before the Beech ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock

... her chair; her granddaughter, a poor, handsome maid-servant, was coming home for a short visit. She kissed her grandmother. There was gold, heart's gold, in that blessed kiss—gold in the mouth, gold in the south, gold in the morning hour. See, that's my little story," said the Buttercup. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester

... lifts the head Of many a columbine; And, taken from their rocky bed, They in our wreaths shall twine. Saxifrage, so small and sweet, Grows in plenty at our feet; From the grass we gather up, Golden bright, the buttercup. ...
— Cousin Hatty's Hymns and Twilight Stories • Wm. Crosby And H.P. Nichols

... the puffs and the linen gown, and thought only of the exquisitely beautiful face and rippling golden hair, for Bessie's head was uncovered, and Neil saw that she received quite as much admiration from the fashionable crowd as did Little Buttercup or the Captain's daughter, and that Jack looked supremely happy and nodded to his friends here and there as if to call their attention ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... strapped on a gray pony, and waits impatiently for the music. The seats fill, the organ sounds forth, "I'm called Little Buttercup," and away they float ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... debris. The only plants that escaped the cattle were such as were either poisonous, or thorny, or resinous, or indestructibly tough. Hence we had only a great development of solanums, talas, acacias, euphorbias, and laurels. The buttercup is replaced by the little poisonous yellow oxalis with its viviparous buds; the passion-flowers, asclepiads, bignonias, convolvuluses, and climbing leguminous plants escape both floods and cattle by climbing ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... having reached her drawing-room, she proceeded to adjust some dainty gilt cups that stood on a small table. "That is, if you are allowed to have coffee at night. From your roseleaf cheeks, I fancy you drink only honeydew or buttercup tea." ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells

... we called Phoebus, because we had found him at sunrise and he had such yellow locks—yellow as the dandelion or the buttercup—was a stray thing picked up on the seashore in Apulia—a soft, merry, chirping little fellow, of whom we were all fond, and to whom we had easily taught that absence of fear which enabled us to play ball with him in our spectacles. He always delighted the people, he was such a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... during the past seven years. Its range is very wide, and in these twenty-three stories, we have the best of the mystical war legends from "The Grey Angel" to "Cafard," the gentle irony of "The Recruit" and "Defeat," and the gracious vision of "Spindleberries," "The Nightmare Child," and "Buttercup-Night." Nowhere in the volume do we find the slight touch of sentimentality which has marred the strength of Mr. Galsworthy's later novels, but everywhere very quietly realised pictures of a golden age which is still possible ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... picked a corn buttercup; the flowers were much smaller than the great buttercups which grew in the meadows, and these were not golden but coloured like brass. His foot caught in a creeper, and he nearly tumbled—it was a bine of bindweed ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... then his discontented eye Looked sorrowfully up, And chanced across the path to spy A golden Buttercup. Its petals flinched before the wind, The stalk was roughly bent, And yet the Daisy could not ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... annuals are of a very ephemeral character, few things are more showy or more floriferous. Among many others we may particularise the fragrant white-flowered alyssum, the blue, dark purple, spotted, and white varieties of nemophila, white and pink virginian stock, and the large yellow buttercup-like flowered limnanthes. Batches of the annuals sown in August and September can now be placed in warm spots in the open border, where, in all probability, they will withstand the winter ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... mental picture of the tiny atoms clasping each other, and mingling so as to make a new substance, and to feel how wonderful are the many changing forms of nature. It is useful to be able to classify a flower and to know that the buttercup belongs to the Family Ranunculaceae, with petals free and definite, stamens hypogynous and indefinite, pistil apocarpous. But it is far sweeter to learn about the life of the little plant, to understand why its peculiar flower is useful to it, and how it feeds itself, ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley

... this chamber with a multitude of elegant trifles. He had the ceiling and walls hung with an extraordinary stuff, which he had by him in the piece, and which he believed to have emanated from Utrecht with a buttercup-colored satin ground, covered with velvet auricula blossoms.—"It was with that stuff," said he, "that the bed of the Duchesse d'Anville at la Roche-Guyon was draped."—On the chimney-piece, he set a little figure in Saxe porcelain, carrying a muff ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo



Words linked to "Buttercup" :   meadow buttercup, Ranunculus acris, Mount Cook lily, crowfoot, celery-leaved buttercup, creeping crowfoot, Ranunculus, Ranunculus bulbosus, Ranunculus occidentalis, giant buttercup, kingcup, buttercup family, butterflower, western buttercup, tall field buttercup, Ranunculus sceleratus, creeping buttercup, water buttercup, butter-flower, goldcup, genus Ranunculus, tall crowfoot, herbaceous plant, Bermuda buttercup, Ranunculus repens, sagebrush buttercup



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