Potentilla incanaP.Gaertn., B.Mey. & Scherb.

WFO wfo-0000983817 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Potentilla incana, photographed by Татьяна Горбушина
fig. a Татьяна Горбушина, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-02 / obs. 203182627
Potentilla incana, photographed by Petr Harant
fig. b Petr Harant, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196323719
Potentilla incana, photographed by Erwin Gruber
fig. c Erwin Gruber, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 200773053
Potentilla incana, photographed by Elena_Sherehora
fig. d Elena_Sherehora, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196256019
Potentilla incana, photographed by Christian Berg
fig. e Christian Berg, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194281873
Potentilla incana, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. f Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194234905
Potentilla incana, photographed by Pavel Kacl
fig. g Pavel Kacl, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 193936550
Potentilla incana, photographed by Galyna Mykytynets
fig. h Galyna Mykytynets, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203604907

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.

Flowering 288 in flower of 309 examined

Peak flowering in Apr. Each bar is the share of Potentilla incana observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 288 of 309 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 3 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,995 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -14.0 °C -5.0 °C -2.1 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 22.4 °C 24.7 °C 27.8 °C
Annual rainfall 454 mm 589 mm 851 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 78 mm 100 mm 139 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,995 research-grade observations of Potentilla incana 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. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 21 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 acaulis subsp. arenaria (Borkh.) Soják
  • Potentilla arenaria Borkh.
  • Potentilla arenaria Borkh. ex P.Gaertn., B.Mey. & Scherb.
  • Potentilla arenaria f. concolor Th.Wolf ex Domin
  • Potentilla arenaria f. glandulosa Th.Wolf
  • Potentilla arenaria subsp. incana (P.Gaertn., B.Mey. & Scherb.) O.Schwarz
  • Potentilla arenaria subvar. glandulosa (Waisb.) Th.Wolf
  • Potentilla cinerea subsp. arenaria (Borkh.) P.Fourn.
  • Potentilla cinerea subsp. incana (P.Gaertn., B.Mey. & Scherb.) Asch.
  • Potentilla cinerea subvar. incana (P.Gaertn., B.Mey. & Scherb.) Nyman
  • Potentilla cinerea var. arenaria (Borkh.) Nyman
  • Potentilla cinerea var. incana (P.Gaertn., B.Mey. & Scherb.) Beck
  • Potentilla incana var. glandulosa (Waisb.) Poeverl.
  • Potentilla incana var. heptaphylla Hippelli ex Domin
  • Potentilla maculata Gilib.
  • Potentilla meridionalis var. concolor Th.Wolf ex Domin
  • Potentilla stellulata Rochel
  • Potentilla subacaulis var. incana (P.Gaertn., B.Mey. & Scherb.) Fiori
  • Potentilla verna subsp. arenaria (Borkh.) Gams
  • Potentilla verna subsp. incana (P.Gaertn., B.Mey. & Scherb.) Schübl. & G.Martens
  • Potentilla verna var. incana (P.Gaertn., B.Mey. & Scherb.) C.C.Gmel.

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 and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite. It has no native range either: Kew's checklist does not cover this taxon.