The Sicilian Buttercup, bred in Australia, Great Britain and the North America, derives from it, but its long separation from the original stock has led to marked differences between the two.

The Siciliana appears to derive from ancient inter-breeding of local Sicilian birds with North African stock[1] such as the rose-combed Berbera breed[2]: 701 [3] or the Tripolitana described by Tucci.

[5]: 314 [6] Chickens similar to the Siciliana are depicted in sixteenth-century paintings in the Vatican Museums and the Galleria Borghese in Rome, and in Florence and Paris.

[7][8] In about 1863[9]: 439  or 1877,[10]: 22  a certain Cephas Dawes of Dedham, Massachusetts, captain of the Frutiere, was loading oranges in Sicily and bought a number of chickens to provide meat on his homeward journey.

[4] The Siciliana was described in 1922 by Ferruccio Frau-Sanna, who praised the work of Tucci but found stocks to be low and of uneven type.