Caltha appendiculata is a low (2½-7 cm high) dioecious, perennial herb, often growing in dense clusters over considerable areas, with thick rhizomes.

Its thick and fleshy leaves consist of a short leafstalk and a blade of between six and ten mm long, which is ovate, elliptical or oblong in outline, has an entire margin or is split into three lobes, and usually is retuse at the tip.

These appendages are in fact homologous with the ears at the base of the leaf blade of Northern Hemisphere Caltha species.

The faintly sweet scented actinomorphic solitary flowers of between one and two cm across have five spreading, lanceolate, pale yellow to creamy-green sepals with a purplish margin, and which are gradually narrowing towards the tip.

[1][2][3] The species occurs on the Hermite Islands, the Falklands, Tierra del Fuego and the Southern Andes, in trickling melt water, marshes and other wet areas, from sea level up to about 2000 m.[2]