Potentilla gracilisDouglas ex Hook.

slender cinquefoil

WFO wfo-0001005470 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Potentilla gracilis, photographed by Shane Johnson
fig. a Shane Johnson, CC0 1.0 / 2022-05-23 / obs. 202327974
Potentilla gracilis, photographed by Ellyne Geurts
fig. b Ellyne Geurts, CC0 1.0 / obs. 195275488
Potentilla gracilis, photographed by mark-groeneveld
fig. c mark-groeneveld, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 152780002
Potentilla gracilis, photographed by Tim Messick
fig. d Tim Messick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 168515570
Potentilla gracilis, photographed by Jason Grant
fig. e Jason Grant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 147211968
Potentilla gracilis, photographed by Mitch Van Dyke
fig. f Mitch Van Dyke, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 83636373
Potentilla gracilis, photographed by dougbrown
fig. g dougbrown, CC0 1.0 / obs. 144575730
Potentilla gracilis, photographed by Tim Messick
fig. h Tim Messick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 179526530

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 988 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 988 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 60 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.

  • Pentaphyllum viridescens (Th.Wolf) Lunell
  • Potentilla angustata Rydb.
  • Potentilla blaschkeana Turcz. ex Lehm.
  • Potentilla blaschkeana var. glomerata (A.Nelson) Th.Wolf
  • Potentilla blaschkeana var. permollis (Rydb.) Th.Wolf
  • Potentilla brunescens Th.Wolf
  • Potentilla brunnescens Rydb.
  • Potentilla chrysantha Lehm.
  • Potentilla comosa Rydb.
  • Potentilla concinna A.Gray
  • Potentilla ctenophora (Rydb.) Rydb.
  • Potentilla dichroa Rydb.
  • Potentilla digitatoflabellata Heidenr.
  • Potentilla diversifolia var. jucunda (A.Nelson) Th.Wolf
  • Potentilla elmeri Rydb.
  • Potentilla etomentosa Rydb.
  • Potentilla etomentosa subsp. hallii (Rydb.) Abrams
  • Potentilla etomentosa var. hallii (Rydb.) Abrams
  • Potentilla fastigiata Nutt.
  • Potentilla fastigiata var. jucunda (A.Nelson) Soják
  • Potentilla fastigiata var. permollis (Rydb.) Soják
  • Potentilla flabelliformis Lehm.
  • Potentilla flabelliformis var. ctenophora Rydb.
  • Potentilla flabelliformis var. inyoensis Jeps.

and 36 more.

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.

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