Potentilla
genus of plants
Potentilla is a genus containing over 500 species of annual, biennial and perennial herbaceous flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae.
Potentillas may also be called cinquefoils in English, but they have also been called five fingers and silverweeds. Some species are called tormentils, though this is often used specifically for common tormentil (P. erecta). Others are referred to as barren strawberries, which may also refer to P. sterilis in particular, or to the closely related Waldsteinia fragarioides. Several other cinquefoils formerly included here are now separated in distinct genera – notably the popular garden shrub P. fruticosa, now Dasiphora fruticosa.
Potentillas are generally found throughout the northern continents of the world (holarctic), though some occur in montane biomes of the New Guinea Highlands.
Description
Typical cinquefoils look most similar to strawberries, but differ in usually having dry, inedible fruit (hence the name "barren strawberry" for some species). Many cinquefoil species have palmate leaves. Some species have just three leaflets, while others have fifteen or more leaflets arranged pinnately. The flowers are usually yellow, but may be white, pinkish or red.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Potentilla” is genus of plants. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Potentilla, genus and plants, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q156512. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Potentilla” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.