Potentilla sericata(S.Watson) Greene

silky horkelia

WFO wfo-0000991695 Accepted WFO 2026-06 6 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–f · 2 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 2 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 sericata, photographed by Asher Budnik
fig. a Asher Budnik, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-05-29 / obs. 139769752
Potentilla sericata, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. b Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112433009
Potentilla sericata, photographed by Asher Budnik
fig. c Asher Budnik, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 139769791
Potentilla sericata, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. d Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112433018
Potentilla sericata, photographed by Asher Budnik
fig. e Asher Budnik, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 139769822
Potentilla sericata, photographed by Yves Bas
fig. f Yves Bas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 112433025

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
Smithsonian, US National Herbarium
Accession
US 333598
Filed as
Potentilla sericata (S.Watson) Greene
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
E. Hammond 1893-07-15
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC0 1.0)

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 2 botanical countries

Regions where Potentilla sericata is native: California, Oregon CaliforniaOregon
Native distribution of Potentilla sericata, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
California CAL NORTHERN AMERICA
Oregon ORE

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.

Also published as 3 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.

  • Horkelia laxiflora (Drew) Rydb.
  • Horkelia sericata S.Watson
  • Potentilla laxiflora Drew

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. USDA PLANTS Database. common name, checklist symbol HOSE. public domain. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. 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.