Licence: Creative Commons

Common Name: Persian buttercup

Type: Bulb

Family: Ranunculaceae

Zone: 8 to 10

Native Range: Southern Europe, southwestern Asia

Height: 1 to 2 feet

Spread: 1 to 2 feet

Bloom Time: May to June

Bloom Color: Pink, Purple, Red, White, Yellow

Bloom Description: Red, pink, purple, yellow or white

                                                    Rannunculus

 history:
Ranunculus has its origins in the middle east. It is a genus containing about 600 species of plants. Ranunculus is a part of the Ranunculaceae family. Some examples of the plants belonging to the genus includes the buttercups, water crowfoots and the lesser celandine. Today, these flowers thrive throughout the world, in both eastern and western gardens.
Ranunculus flowers is the epitome of charm and charisma. A bouquet of these flowers is supposed to convey the message “ I am dazzled by your charms”.


mythology:
 The name Ranunculus in late Latin means "little frog," The meaning of “Rana” in late Latin is "frog". In fairy tales frogs are often found to be turned into a prince. This is thought to be the connection between the story of the prince and the origin of the name Ranunculus.
Once upon a time there lived an Asian prince. He was very good-looking. He had a lovely voice and sang beautiful songs in the presence of nymphs. One day, he met a nymph and fell in love with her. They met often but he could not bring himself to declare his love for her. This haunted him so bad that he soon died. When he died, he was transformed into the delicate tissue-like flowers that bears his name.
The association of the meaning of the word Ranunculus with frog is thought to be because these flowers are generally found in swampy areas, like the frogs.  -

                                            Hunters in the snow   -   Pieter Brugel the Elder
"Bruegel was able to perfectly capture the light, the feel, the atmosphere of a late winter afternoon in the countryside. Exactly what countryside it’s meant to be is a mystery - there certainly aren’t any mountains like that in Holland. But Pieter Bruegel did take a long trip to Italy, so he was certainly familiar with mountains. And anyway, exact locations don’t matter. The painting Winter is the archetype of winter, the Idea of winter. It can be any winter you want it to be, anywhere you think it should be. The fact that the painting is unconstrained by an exact location is part of what gives the work its enduring quality.
I think that Hunters in the Snow is more constrained by a sense of time than of place. Despite the fact that the year 1565 is not really the Middle Ages anymore, Hunters in the Snow perfectly captures my concept of what the Middle Ages was like: cold, brutal, fairly miserable, and real. Perhaps it’s that aspect of Bruegel’s paintings that intrigues me most of all: his subjects are so detailed and so realistically portrayed that they seem to be able to march right off of the canvas and into our world."    Jessica Spengler


I second that review. I have always been a fan of Carravagio and Brugel the Elder for their dynanic realism, and ability to capture life in everyday norms with a hint of darkness, but not too much, because the viewer has to be able to think of those people in regular terms, they're tired, they just marched up a big hill, and they are looking at the frivolity below them probably with some envy.  Artists are usually somewhat morose individuals anyway, so we could picture them just as easily on a sunny afternoon, but it wouldn't be as much fun.  - b.s. (Bavarian Snowflake)

Licence: Public Domain