Potentilla freynianaBornm.

WFO wfo-0001017336 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 7 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 7 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Potentilla freyniana, photographed by Timur Kalininsky
fig. a Timur Kalininsky, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-21 / obs. 196411760
Potentilla freyniana, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. b mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187026987
Potentilla freyniana, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. c mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186865826
Potentilla freyniana, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. d mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 124072038
Potentilla freyniana, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. e mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 121964013
Potentilla freyniana, photographed by mami_t_t
fig. f mami_t_t, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 120176195
Potentilla freyniana, photographed by Marco Mussita
fig. g Marco Mussita, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 38457264
Potentilla freyniana, photographed by Timur Kalininsky
fig. h Timur Kalininsky, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196411633

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 11 botanical countries

Regions where Potentilla freyniana is native: Amur, China North-Central, China South-Central, China Southeast, Inner Mongolia, Japan, Khabarovsk, Korea, Manchuria, Primorye, Taiwan AmurChina North-CentralChina South-CentralChina SoutheastInner MongoliaJapanKhabarovskManchuriaPrimoryeTaiwan Korea
Native distribution of Potentilla freyniana, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Amur AMU ASIA-TEMPERATE
China North-Central CHN
China South-Central CHC
China Southeast CHS
Inner Mongolia CHI
Japan JAP
Khabarovsk KHA
Korea KOR
Manchuria CHM
Primorye PRM
Taiwan TAI

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Where it actually grows measured, from 139 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -24.7 °C -1.3 °C 1.0 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.2 °C 28.6 °C 31.4 °C
Annual rainfall 600 mm 1,458 mm 2,134 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 28 mm 142 mm 254 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 139 research-grade observations of Potentilla freyniana that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one.

Also published as 15 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Potentilla fragarioides f. trifoliata Takeda
  • Potentilla fragarioides subsp. freyniana (Bornm.) Th.Wolf
  • Potentilla fragarioides var. ternata Maxim.
  • Potentilla fragiformis var. japonica A.Gray
  • Potentilla freyniana f. miyoshii (Honda & Oishi) Naruh.
  • Potentilla freyniana f. miyoshii Honda & Oishi ex Suzuki
  • Potentilla freyniana f. monophylla (Koidz. ex Terasaki) Kitag.
  • Potentilla freyniana f. plena Miyoshi ex Suzuki
  • Potentilla freyniana var. miyoshii Honda & Oishi
  • Potentilla freyniana var. nitens Pamp.
  • Potentilla longepetiolata H.Lév.
  • Potentilla monophylla Koidz. ex Terasaki
  • Potentilla morii Hayata
  • Potentilla sutchuenica Cardot
  • Potentilla ternata (Maxim.) Freyn

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.