Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
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 36 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Alaska | ASK | NORTHERN AMERICA |
| Alberta | ABT | |
| Arizona | ARI | |
| British Columbia | BRC | |
| California | CAL | |
| Colorado | COL | |
| Idaho | IDA | |
| Iowa | IOW | |
| Manitoba | MAN | |
| Minnesota | MIN | |
| Montana | MNT | |
| Nebraska | NEB | |
| Nevada | NEV | |
| New Mexico | NWM | |
| North Dakota | NDA | |
| Northwest Territories | NWT | |
| Ontario | ONT | |
| Québec | QUE | |
| Saskatchewan | SAS | |
| South Dakota | SDA | |
| Texas | TEX | |
| Utah | UTA | |
| Wyoming | WYO | |
| Yukon | YUK | |
| Altay | ALT | ASIA-TEMPERATE |
| Inner Mongolia | CHI | |
| Kazakhstan | KAZ | |
| Kirgizstan | KGZ | |
| Manchuria | CHM | |
| Mongolia | MON | |
| Xinjiang | CHX | |
| Yakutiya | YAK | |
| East European Russia | RUE | EUROPE |
| Italy | ITA | |
| North European Russia | RUN | |
| Spain | SPA |
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.
Flowering 152 in flower of 290 examined
Peak flowering in Jul. Each bar is the share of Potentilla pensylvanica 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. 152 of 290 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 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 1,010 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | -26.8 °C | -14.9 °C | -8.4 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 18.7 °C | 24.2 °C | 28.1 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 316 mm | 430 mm | 749 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 30 mm | 45 mm | 99 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 1,010 research-grade observations of Potentilla pensylvanica 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 62 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 pennsylvanicum (L.) Lunell
- Pentaphyllum platylobum (Rydb.) Lunell
- Pentaphyllum strigosum (Pall. ex Pursh) Lunell
- Potentilla absinthifolia Douglas ex Lehm.
- Potentilla absinthiifolia Douglas ex Hook.
- Potentilla absinthiifolia Douglas ex Lehm.
- Potentilla agrimonioides subsp. oreodoxa (Soják) Soják
- Potentilla arachnoidea Douglas ex Lehm.
- Potentilla atrovirens Rydb.
- Potentilla biebersteiniana Tratt.
- Potentilla candicans Fisch. ex Lehm.
- Potentilla hispanica subsp. oreodoxa (Soják) Soják
- Potentilla hispanica var. nivea Andr.
- Potentilla hispida Willd.
- Potentilla nudicaulis Kurbatski
- Potentilla oreodoxa Soják
- Potentilla pectinata Fisch. ex Ser.
- Potentilla pectinata Fisch. ex Lehm.
- Potentilla pensylvanica f. alpestris Krylov
- Potentilla pensylvanica f. sanguisorbifolia (Favre ex Zimmeter) Beck
- Potentilla pensylvanica f. stepposa Krylov
- Potentilla pensylvanica prol. hispida (Willd.) Th.Wolf
- Potentilla pensylvanica prol. sanguisorbifolia (Favre ex Zimmeter) Rouy & E.G.Camus
- Potentilla pensylvanica subsp. hispida (Willd.) Tratt.
and 38 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.