The Flora of Svalbard

Place: Kapp Thordsen

Life span

Perennial, potentially very long-lived due to its creeping and rooting stems.

Growth form

Herb with extensively creeping subterranean stems, rooting at the nodes and with erect, stalked leaves and flowers from the nodes. Stems thick, white, usually embedded in peat or mud. Stems and leaves glabrous.

Leaf

Leaves alternate. Lateral shoots developing from axial buds within the leaf sheaths. Leaves with petiole 1−2 times as long as the blade, 1–3(–5) cm long and 1 mm thick. None or one stem leaf at the lower part of the stem, with short petiole. Blades 1.1–2.2 × 0.7–2 cm, round to oblate in outline, palmatisect with 3 lobes with dentate apex.

Inflorescence

Single terminal flowers on pedicels 4–6(–9) cm tall, 2–4 times as long as the leaves.

Flower

Flower radially symmetric, ca 1 cm wide, with 3 sepals and 5–6 petals. Sepals 3–4 × 3–4 mm, broadly ovate, outer surface green to purple and inner surface pale yellow with some purple, often deflexed, shorter than petals. Petals 4–6 × 2–3 mm, obovate, yellow. Stamens numerous (>10), ca. 2 mm, with yellow anthers and filaments.Receptacle up to 1 mm long, glabrous. Carpels 6–15, free, yellow.

Fruit

The fruits are nutlets, glabrous, laterally compressed, and with long (1–1.2 mm), curved beaks. Head of nutlets semiglobose.

Reproduction

Vegetative reproduction by shoot fragments that become detached. Flowers regularly and produces numerous nutlets, but none collected in 2008 germinated (Alsos et al. in prep.).

Comparison

The species of the genus Coptidium differ from those of the genus Ranunculus in several features, the most evident being the thick, white, creeping underground stems and the leaves and flowers arising mostly singly above ground from these stems. There is nothing similar in Ranunculus. Another difference is the fragrant flowers of Coptidium (no fragrance in Ranunculus). Less visible is the corky floating tissue in the fruits of Coptidium, absent in Ranunculus. Coptidium lapponicum is rather easily distinguished both from the other Coptidium species and the Ranuculus species in Svalbard by the 3-lobed leaves which are round to oblate in outline, and the small flowers on long pedicels.

Habitat

Growing in wet, slightly acidic to slightly calcareous moss tundra.

Distribution

Restricted to the middle arctic tundra zone except for a few localities in the northern arctic tundra zone. Found in the weakly continental and transitional sections. The species is restricted to Spitsbergen, and the majority of sites are found between Van Mijenfjorden and Isfjorden.

Comments

Literature

Alsos, I.G., Müller, E. & Eidesen, P.B. In prep. Germinability of 87 arctic species stored in Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Coptidium lapponicum

	English name:	Lapland Buttercup
	German name:
	Norwegian name:	Lappsoleie

Familiy:Ranunculaceae

Synonyms:

Ranunculus lapponicus L.

Groupe:
Lifeform:
Worldwide distribution:
Distribution on Svalbard:
Diploid/Polyploid:
Chromosome number (2n):
Pollination vector:
Main mode of pollination:
Source: Brochmann, C. & Steen, S.W, 1999 - Sex and genes in the flora of Svalbard

Coptidium lapponicum (L.) Tzvelev