Ranunculus trilobusDesf.

threelobe buttercup

WFO wfo-0000461459 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 4 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 4 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Ranunculus trilobus, photographed by José Luis Camaño
fig. a José Luis Camaño, CC0 1.0 / 2022-03-27 / obs. 184893153
Ranunculus trilobus, photographed by Stephen Thorpe
fig. b Stephen Thorpe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 92394101
Ranunculus trilobus, photographed by Lauren McLaurin
fig. c Lauren McLaurin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 17914739
Ranunculus trilobus, photographed by Stephen Thorpe
fig. d Stephen Thorpe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 92393920
Ranunculus trilobus, photographed by Lauren McLaurin
fig. e Lauren McLaurin, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 17914926
Ranunculus trilobus, photographed by José Luis Camaño
fig. f José Luis Camaño, CC0 1.0 / obs. 184893234
Ranunculus trilobus, photographed by Stephen Thorpe
fig. g Stephen Thorpe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 98179642
Ranunculus trilobus, photographed by Stephen Thorpe
fig. h Stephen Thorpe, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 98179384

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 17 botanical countries

Regions where Ranunculus trilobus is native: Algeria, Azores, Canary Is., Libya, Madeira, Morocco, Tunisia, Albania, Baleares, Corse, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Sardegna, Sicilia, Spain AlgeriaLibyaMoroccoTunisiaAlbaniaCorseFranceGreeceItalyPortugalSiciliaSpain AzoresCanary Is.MadeiraBalearesSardegna
Native distribution of Ranunculus trilobus, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Baleares BAL
Corse COR
France FRA
Greece GRC
Italy ITA
Portugal POR
Sardegna SAR
Sicilia SIC
Spain SPA
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Azores AZO
Canary Is. CNY
Libya LBY
Madeira MDR
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 37 in flower of 43 examined

Peak flowering in Sep. Each bar is the share of Ranunculus trilobus observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 37 of 43 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 4 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Ranunculus rhaeadifolius Poir.
  • Ranunculus rhoeadifolius DC.
  • Ranunculus rosani Ten.
  • Ranunculus vilaenadalis Sennen

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.