General: Perennial herb from stout branched stem-base; stems slender, 1 to several, tufted, erect or decumbent at the base, 20-50 cm tall, usually with short and long, spreading or ascending hairs.
Leaves: Basal leaves stalked, pinnately compound but sometimes appearing palmate; leaflets 5 to 7 (9), crowded, oblong to lanceolate, 1-6 cm long, cleft nearly to the midrib into linear-oblong lobes, grey-green and sparsely to densely hairy on the upper surface, white-woolly overlain with long-silky hairs or occasionally nearly smooth and greenish beneath; stem leaves alternate, similar but short-stalked, 2 to 4, reduced upward.
Flowers: Inflorescence an open to compact and narrow, terminal cluster of several to many stalked flowers; corollas yellow, bowl-shaped, the petals 5, heart-shaped, 2-3 mm long; calyces woolly- to appressed-hairy and more or less glandular, 5-lobed, the lobes egg-shaped, 3-4 mm long, alternating with 5 shorter, lance-oblong bractlets; ovaries superior, the styles glandular-warty-thickened at the base; stamens usually 20.
Fruits: Achenes, numerous, clustered, lopsided-egg-shaped, about 1 mm long.
Moist meadows, grassy slopes, alkali flats and lake margins in the steppe and montane zones; infrequent in BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains; N to AK, YT and NT, E to NF and S to CA, NM, IN and NH.
The table below shows the species-specific information calculated from original data (BEC database) provided by the BC Ministry of Forests and Range. (Updated August, 2013)
BC Ministry of Environment:BC Species and Ecosystems Explorer,
the authoritative source for conservation information in British Columbia.
Synonyms and Alternate Names
Potentilla bipinnatifida var. bipinnatifida Potentilla finitima Kohli & Packer Potentilla pensylvanica var. arida B. Boivin Potentilla pensylvanica var. bipinnatifida (Douglas ex Hook.) Torr. & A. Gray