Ranunculus asiaticus Butterfly Hestia® - Persian Buttercup

Butterfly™ Hestia® updates the image of the Persian buttercup with its exceptionally light, luminous and refined flowering. Its large cream, peach and pink corollas with a black eye evoke the flowers of a poppy or a Japanese anemone. It is very floriferous, produces several flowers per stem and offers excellent vase life. It is a valuable variety for spring borders, flowering containers and cut flower gardens.

This variety belongs to the Ranunculaceae family. It derives from Ranunculus asiaticus, the Asian buttercup, garden buttercup, Persian buttercup or Oriental buttercup. The botanical species is a tuberous perennial, more precisely a geophyte with fleshy claws, native to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. It is found in the wild from the southern islands of the Aegean Sea to western and southwestern Iran, as well as in Crete, Cyprus, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Libya and Sinai. It grows in open, summer-dry, often stony habitats, such as garrigue, phrygana or sparse grasslands.

Butterfly™ Hestia® is a Japanese selection by Aya Engei, the breeder of the Butterfly™ series. This series is characterised by single to semi-double flowers, covered with a fine, shiny, waxy film on the petals, borne on branched stems carrying several flower buds. Hestia® forms an upright clump of 45 to 60 cm in height, sometimes a little more, and 20 to 30 cm wide within a few months. The thin but firm stems bear 5 to 7 buds and cup-shaped flowers, measuring 7 to 9 cm in diameter. They have thin, satiny, slightly crinkled petals, in a cream to ivory, washed with very pale apricot, with a central zone of a deeper pink around a small, almost black heart. Flowering occurs from April to June, depending on the planting date and climate. The divided, bright green foliage forms a low clump similar to flat-leaf parsley. The basal leaves are lobed, while those on the stems are more divided. As with all Persian buttercups, the aerial vegetation dries up after flowering when the plant goes dormant. The tubers can withstand short spells of around -5/-6 °C in very well-drained soil.

In the garden, Butterfly™ Hestia® integrates naturally into spring scenes, planted in small groups in a flower border, in a cut flower bed or in a beautiful container. It can be associated with the pure white Anemone coronaria ‘The Bride’, the powdery-toned double tulip ‘La Belle Epoque’, forget-me-not ‘Savoie Blue’, which lays a blue haze at its feet, and Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae for its vibrant, acid-green flowering. Plant this Persian buttercup in light, rich and perfectly drained soil, in full sun, sheltered from the wind.

By lifting the tubers in autumn, before frosts, you can grow this plant like a gladiolus.