could it be ginger?

Hmm, I don't know. Is there one with a yellow flower? I haven't planted any so it would have to be a volunteer somehow here in coastal Virginia.
Nigell

Ranunculus ficaria, a (nice) weed.

Milo, it might be nice where it's native, but it's definitely one of the worst weeds here in the Mid-Atlantic region where it chokes out most native flora along all stream and river banks and flood plains. I would never plant it! Friends have spent years trying to eradicate it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Invasive plants

Thanks for the warning, carol23. It came up as the single plant last spring, still just the one.(I potted it up so I could keep watch on it and try to identify once it grew again this spring.)
So it hasn't multiplied at all (yet!) in my yard. I have the pot in an area with hard ground, very dry all summer under a maple.
I had thought the leaves were attractive.
Cheers,
Nigell

I agree with Carol. It's native in the UK and pretty in the wild but it is a thug in the garden. I have been fighting it in my garden for nearly 20 years. As well as seed it produces little tubers which break off and are spread by any cultivation or other soil movement. It can choke out more delicate things trying to come up in the Spring. I would check very carefully where you dug it up from to see if it has left any tubers behind.

Hi Flora,
Thanks for your advice. Funny thing is; I never had this in my yard before. I collect leaves and pine needles (from the curb) to mulch my yard. This is probably how I got it. Overall, I get a big benefit to my compost and mulching from collecting bags of chopped leaves etc, but there is the occasional hitchhiker. Some are good, some not :)
So yesterday I went to a yard sale at a home on the river, and their yard was all brown and dormant except for lots of this Ranunculus ficaria! I never would have noticed it before. And you're right; it was all over.
Cheers,
Nigell

By the way, the common name is Lesser Celandine. A welcome harbinger of Spring in its natural habitat.

The bronze foliaged forms ('Brazen Hussy', 'Coppernob', 'Double Mud', 'Tortoiseshell', etc.) tend to be somewhat more desirable garden plantings but all self-seed righteously. Since there is not too much else perennial-wise in bloom at this time of year, I welcome them and find they are easy to remove when they appear where not wanted but they can be a pest and I'd be concerned about them growing close to native areas where they could naturalize and take over.

Oddly, this is a plant that self-sows so freely one wonders why it typically has such a high price tag when offered for sale in nurseries or mail order. The same with Geranium phaeum 'Samobor', which IS a weed in my garden yet costs the earth in nurseries. I've always found this rather perplexing.........

Plant, dirt and all, has been deposited in the trash!
Thanks all!
Nigell