This flower is also called Bachelor's buttons, Aconite buttercup, Aconite-leaved buttercup, Fair maids of France, Fair maids of Kent, and Mountain crowfoot.

Native to central Europe, this herbaceous perennial has slightly hairy leaves and white, saucer-shaped flowers in spring and summer. This species forms clumps, sometimes large colonies in moist places in mountains, meadows, edges of ditches and streams.

This flower may be loosely associated with 14th century Joan, Countess of Kent, known to history as The Fair Maid of Kent. Joan was the mother of King Richard II of England, her son by her third husband, Edward the Black Prince, son and heir apparent of King Edward III. Although the French chronicler Jean Froissart called her "the most beautiful woman in all the realm of England, and the most loving", the appellation "Fair Maid of Kent" was not a contemporary one.