E-Flora BC: Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia

Potentilla anserina subsp. anserina
common silverweed
Rosaceae (Rose family)

Introduction to Vascular Plants
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E-Flora BC Static Map
Distribution of Potentilla anserina subsp. anserina
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Species Information

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General:
Perennial herb from a long, strawberry-like stolon or runner, rooting and producing leaf-clusters at the nodes, spreading-silky on the stolons.
Leaves:
All basal, tufted, 5-25 cm long, stalked, ascending, pinnately compound; 7 to 21 main leaflets 0.5-3.5 cm long, interspersed with smaller ones, oblong to egg-shaped, coarsely saw-toothed, whitish-silky-woolly on both surfaces to greenish and sparsely hairy above, the leaf-stalks spreading-silky.
Flowers:
Inflorescence of single flowers on long naked stalks from the leafy nodes of the stolons, the stalks 3-10 cm long; corollas yellow, bowl-shaped, the petals 5, oval to oval-oblong , 6-12 mm long; calyces silky, 5-lobed, the lobes triangular-egg-shaped, 3-6 mm long, enlarging and becoming erect in fruit, alternating with 5 shorter, often toothed bractlets; ovaries superior; stamens 20 to 25.
Fruits:
Achenes, numerous, plumply egg-shaped, about 2 mm long, wrinkled lengthwise.

Source: The Illustrated Flora of British Columbia

Habitat / Range

Margins of streams, lakes and ponds, mudflats, and moist alkaline meadows and grasslands in the montane zone; common in S BC east of the Coast-Cascade Mountains, rare northward; circumboreal, N to AK, E to NF and S to CA, NM, IA and NY; Eurasia.

Source: The Illustrated Flora of British Columbia

Taxonomic and Nomenclatural Links

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General References