A succulent, herbaceous plant with stout, glabrous, hollow stems, erect or ascending, 1 to 2 feet high, branching and bearing several or numerous bright-yellow flowers. Lower leaves long petioled, the blades cordate or reniform, 2 to 8 inches broad, with a narrow sinus, crenate, dentate, or nearly entire on the margin. Upper leaves smaller, with short petioles or sessile with nearly truncate bases. Flowers 1 to 1½ inches broad; sepals oval, obtuse, petallike. True petals none. Stamens numerous, obovoid. Carpels several, in fruit forming follicles which are slightly compressed, about one-half of an inch long, and slightly curved outward.

In swamps, wet meadows and marshes, Newfoundland to South Carolina, west to Saskatchewan and Nebraska. Flowering in May and June.

Memoir 15 N. Y. State Museum

Plate 59

Marsh Marigold; cowslip Caltha palustris - Memoir 15 N. Y. State Museum