Ranunculidae is a subclass of

flowering plants Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

(Angiosperms) used in some taxonomic systems such as the

Takhtajan system A list of systems of plant taxonomy, system of plant taxonomy, the Takhtajan system of plant classification was published by Armen Takhtajan, in several versions from the 1950s onwards. It is usually compared to the Cronquist system. It admits Para ...

Reveal system A 20th-century system of plant taxonomy, the Reveal system (see also the Thorne & Reveal system) of plant classification was drawn up by the American botanist James Reveal (1941-2015). The system was published online in 1997 in ten parts as lectu ...

. By necessity it includes the order

Ranunculales Ranunculales is an order of flowering plants. Of necessity it contains the family Ranunculaceae, the buttercup family, because the name of the order is based on the name of a genus in that family. Ranunculales belongs to a paraphyletic group k ...

, but otherwise it differs between taxonomic systems. More recent classification systems such as the

Angiosperm Phylogeny Group The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) is an informal international group of systematic botanists who collaborate to establish a consensus on the taxonomy of flowering plants (angiosperms) that reflects new knowledge about plant relationships disc ...

do not use subclasses for Angiosperms. This grouping was first proposed by

Antoine Laurent de Jussieu Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (; 12 April 1748 – 17 September 1836) was a French botanist, notable as the first to publish a natural classification of flowering plants; much of his system remains in use today. His classification was based on an e ...

in 1789 as Ranunculaceae, considered an

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * A socio-political or established or existing order, e.g. World order, Ancien Regime, Pax Britannica * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood ...

within de Jussieu's classification system. It would later be elevated to the rank of subclass by James L. Reveal in 1992, but would become obsolete under the

APG III system The APG III system of flowering plant classification is the third version of a modern, mostly molecular-based, system of plant taxonomy being developed by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG). Published in 2009, it was superseded in 2016 by a f ...

References

Plant subclasses Historically recognized angiosperm taxa {{Ranunculales-stub