Buttercups And Relatives (Ranunculales)

This group gathers Flowering Plants subcategory members belonging to the order Ranunculales, one of the earliest-diverging lineages of eudicots, the large clade that includes most familiar flowering plants. It spans the buttercup family Ranunculaceae itself, meadow buttercups, anemones and clematis among them, the poppy family Papaveraceae, prized for showy, often short-lived petals and, in several species, opium and other alkaloids, and the barberry family Berberidaceae. Members of this order typically bear numerous separate stamens and carpels arranged spirally on a still relatively unspecialized floral receptacle, a structural echo of the order's early position on the flowering-plant family tree, well before the more fused and specialized floral plans of the asterids and later rosids evolved.