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Spinyfruit Buttercup
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Spinyfruit Buttercup
A Native Unknown Photo: Ashutosh Sharma
Common name: Spinyfruit Buttercup, Rough-fruited Buttercup
Botanical name: Ranunculus muricatus    Family: Ranunculaceae (Buttercup family)
Synonyms: Ranunculus cabulicus, Ranunculus coronatus, Ranunculus graecus

Spinyfruit Buttercup is an annual or sometimes biennial herb producing a mostly hairless stem up to half a meter long which may grow erect or prostrate along the ground. The leaves have blades a few cm in length which are deeply divided into three lobes or split into three leaflets. They are hairless to hairy in texture, and are borne at the tips of long leaf-stalks. The flowers have five shiny yellow petals around a lobed central receptacle studded with many stamens and pistils. Flowers are 0.8-1.2 cm in diameter, yellow. Sepals are reflexed, or patent, membranous, ovate, nearly as long as petals or slightly shorter. Petals are roundish-obovate, strongly tapering towards base. The fruit is a spiny achene borne in a spherical cluster of 10 to 20. Spinyfruit Buttercup is found in Europe. West Asia and parts of north India, at altitudes of 500-2000 m.

Identification credit: Ashutosh Sharma Photographed in Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh.

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