Observations by stormcatcher

I've looked at the auto ID suggestions here, abooks of wildflowers for the region, a plant list for a nearby Botanical area and I just cannot find any ranuncula family member that matches this, I thought it might be Asteraceae, like an Erigeron species. But it also has leaves characteristic of the Buttercup family.

I also consider that it might be an early spring ornamental exotic flower, but I'm not that accomplished at identifying all the early spring exotic ornamentals. There were a very few exotic ornamentals that survived previous ownership here, like crocus and grape hyacinth

This came up last year at the end of April, in the middle of a path that I had created 2 years earlier. I moved it to a nearby garden bed and it just bloomed on March 31st this year . These photos are from last year. This is the single plant I've seen of this here.