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.
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.
The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection
- Herbarium
- The New York Botanical Garden
- Accession
- 833156
- Filed as
- Potentilla nivea L.
- Det. by
- B. C. Johnston 1980-01-01
- Collected
- P. A. Rydberg 1911-08-04
- Origin
- US
- The sheet
- View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)
A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.
Native range 49 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Altay | ALT | ASIA-TEMPERATE |
| Buryatiya | BRY | |
| China North-Central | CHN | |
| Chita | CTA | |
| Inner Mongolia | CHI | |
| Irkutsk | IRK | |
| Japan | JAP | |
| Kamchatka | KAM | |
| Kazakhstan | KAZ | |
| Khabarovsk | KHA | |
| Kirgizstan | KGZ | |
| Korea | KOR | |
| Krasnoyarsk | KRA | |
| Magadan | MAG | |
| Manchuria | CHM | |
| Mongolia | MON | |
| Primorye | PRM | |
| Sakhalin | SAK | |
| Tuva | TVA | |
| West Siberia | WSB | |
| Xinjiang | CHX | |
| Yakutiya | YAK | |
| Alaska | ASK | NORTHERN AMERICA |
| Alberta | ABT | |
| Arizona | ARI | |
| British Columbia | BRC | |
| Colorado | COL | |
| Greenland | GNL | |
| Labrador | LAB | |
| Manitoba | MAN | |
| Montana | MNT | |
| New Mexico | NWM | |
| Newfoundland | NFL | |
| Northwest Territories | NWT | |
| Nunavut | NUN | |
| Québec | QUE | |
| Utah | UTA | |
| Washington | WAS | |
| Wyoming | WYO | |
| Yukon | YUK | |
| Austria | AUT | EUROPE |
| East European Russia | RUE | |
| Finland | FIN | |
| France | FRA | |
| Italy | ITA | |
| North European Russia | RUN | |
| Norway | NOR | |
| Sweden | SWE | |
| Switzerland | SWI |
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 231 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -32.4 °C | -25.5 °C | -12.3 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 9.9 °C | 15.6 °C | 22.2 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 271 mm | 643 mm | 1,665 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 9 mm | 57 mm | 299 mm |
It is found where winters are arctic. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 231 research-grade observations of Potentilla nivea 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 53 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.
- Fragaria nivea (L.) Crantz
- Potentilla concinna var. dissecta (S.Watson) B.Boivin
- Potentilla dryophylla Pall. ex Ledeb.
- Potentilla fissuralis Fed. & Al.Fed. ex Popov
- Potentilla flabellifolia subsp. matsumurae Th.Wolf
- Potentilla fragariifolia Less. ex Ledeb.
- Potentilla hemicryophila (Jurtzev) Soják
- Potentilla jamesoniana Grev.
- Potentilla jezoensis Soják
- Potentilla macrantha Ledeb.
- Potentilla matsuokana Makino
- Potentilla michoacana Rydb.
- Potentilla nivea f. alpina (Turcz.) Th.Wolf
- Potentilla nivea f. arctica Cham. & Schltdl.
- Potentilla nivea f. incisa (Turcz.) Th.Wolf
- Potentilla nivea f. major (Turcz.) Th.Wolf
- Potentilla nivea f. multiflora Lehm.
- Potentilla nivea f. unifoliolosa (Hultén) B.Boivin
- Potentilla nivea prol. vulgaris (Cham. & Schltdl.) Th.Wolf
- Potentilla nivea subsp. chionodes Hiitonen
- Potentilla nivea subsp. fallax A.E.Porsild
- Potentilla nivea subsp. nivea
- Potentilla nivea unranked vulgaris Ledeb.
- Potentilla nivea var. alpina Turcz.
and 29 more.
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
- Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
- 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.