General: Annual to biennial herb from a taproot; stems slender, spreading to ascending, 10-50 cm long/tall, freely branched, leafy, finely spreading- to appressed-hairy or woolly.
Leaves: Basal leaves few, stalked, palmately compound; leaflets 5, oval to lance-oblong, 1-5 cm long, coarse-toothed, fine-hairy; stem leaves alternate, several, the lower similar to the basal but the upper usually with 3 leaflets.
Flowers: Inflorescence a spreading, leafy-bracted, terminal cluster of many stalked flowers; corollas yellow, cup-shaped, the petals 5, spoon-shaped, about 2 mm long, about 1/2 the length of the calyx-lobes; calyces soft-hairy, 5-lobed, the lobes triangular-egg-shaped, alternating with 5 longer narrower bractlets; ovaries superior, the styles thickened at the base; stamens 5-15.
Fruits: Achenes, numerous, clustered, lopsided-egg-shaped, about 0.7 mm long, yellowish-brown, smooth or slightly wrinkled.
Moist to wet meadows, streambanks, lakeshores, ditches and edges of wetlands in the lowland and montane zones; infrequent in S BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, rare in SW BC (where introduced); E to SK and S to MN, MO, NM and CA.
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 leucocarpa Rydb. Potentilla millegrana Engelm. ex Lehm. Potentilla pentandra Engelm. Potentilla rivalis var. millegrana (Engelm. ex Lehm.) S. Wats. Potentilla rivalis var. pentandra (Engelm.) S. Wats. Potentilla rivalis var. rivalis Nutt. [superfluous autonym]
