Caltha scaposa has flowers on stems that grow on after flowering from 7 to 24 cm high, with a thick rootstock that branches into many main roots. Its leaves are in a rosette and consist of a leafstalk and a leafblade. The leafstalk is up to 10 cm long, and has a narrow, membranous and about 2½ cm long sheath at the base. The leafblade is long hart-shaped or sometimes kidney-shaped (1½-3½ x 1–3 cm), with a blunt tip and an entire, scalloped or tooth-bearing margin. Mostly there are several flowering stems in each plant, which sometimes carry one, small, leaflike stipule and usually one, rarely 2 flowers of about 2½ cm across. As all marsh-marigolds, it lacks petals, but the five to nine (most often six) sepals are petal-like, strikingly yellow, inverted egg-shaped with a blunt tip, 10-15 x 6–8 mm. There are between twenty and forty stamens with flattened yellow filaments that carry yellow pollen, and encircle between ten and twenty carpels which are linear-oblong and prolonged into the persistent style, topped by an oblique and curved stigma. After pollination, the carpels develop into follicles of about 10x3 mm on 1½-3 mm long stalks. They may contain three to six ovoid, black seeds. Flowering occurs between June and August.
