The Mount Cook lily (Ranunculus lyallii) is one of New Zealand’s most well known alpine plants.
It is the world’s largest buttercup.
It can grow over a metre tall with leaves larger than the size of your hand. Some leaves have been recorded as big as 40cm across.
The cup-like leaves will often hold water after a rainfall and trampers sometimes stop to slurp a drink from them.
It grows in sub-alpine to alpine herbfields in the South Island mountains from Marlborough to Stewart Island from 700m to 1500m in altitude. It is well adapted to grow in infertile soils and it favours stream banks and damp locations in scrub and grasslands. Due to its ornamental flowers, the Mount Cook lily has also been cultivated. Plenty of water, good drainage and shade in hot areas are required and it is intolerant of high nutrient levels in soil.
It’s called a lily – but is it?
Although its name implies it is a lily and its large green leaves resemble those of one, it is in fact not a lily at all. It belongs to the buttercup family and is sometimes known as the giant buttercup. When it was first discovered by Dr David Lyall in the mid 1800s he collected only leaves so it wasn’t till a decade later that it was identified as a buttercup when Sir Julius von Haast and Dr Andrew Sinclair collected flowering specimens.
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