Potentilla pensylvanica var. pensylvanica

General:
Perennial herb from a simple or branched stem-base covered with brown remains of old leaf-bases; stems slender, 1 to several, tufted, spreading to erect, 10-80 cm tall, simple or branched above, hairy and usually also thinly woolly.

Leaves:
Basal leaves stalked, pinnately compound; leaflets 7 to 11 (15), the upper 3 the largest, oblong to lanceolate, 1-5 cm long, cleft halfway or nearly to the midrib into linear-oblong lobes, grey-green and smooth to appressed-hairy on the upper surface, white-woolly to minutely appressed-hairy or nearly smooth and greenish beneath; stem leaves alternate, 3 to 4, reduced upwards.

Flowers:
Inflorescence a compact, narrow, terminal cluster of few to several stalked flowers; corollas yellow, bowl-shaped, the petals 5, egg-shaped, 5-8 mm long, shallowly notched or not at the tip; calyces woolly- to appressed-hairy and more or less glandular, 5-lobed, the lobes lance-triangular, 4-7 mm long, alternating with 5 shorter, narrowly lanceolate bractlets; ovaries superior, the styles glandular-warty-thickened at the base; stamens usually 20.

Fruits:
Achenes, numerous, clustered, lopsided-egg-shaped, 1-1.5 mm long, brown, smooth but often granular.

Source:  The Illustrated Flora of British Columbia