Potentilla thuringiacaBernh. ex Link

European cinquefoil

WFO wfo-0001018725 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Potentilla thuringiaca, photographed by Anastasia_Surkova
fig. a Anastasia_Surkova, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205901445
Potentilla thuringiaca, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. b Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205246882
Potentilla thuringiaca, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. c Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205241828
Potentilla thuringiaca, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. d Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205247846
Potentilla thuringiaca, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. e Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205244519
Potentilla thuringiaca, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. f Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205249795
Potentilla thuringiaca, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. g Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205245242
Potentilla thuringiaca, photographed by Aleksei Baushev
fig. h Aleksei Baushev, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205242772

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
03758154
Filed as
Potentilla thuringiaca Bernh. ex Link
Det. by
not recorded on this sheet
Collected
not recorded
Origin
not recorded
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 21 botanical countries

Regions where Potentilla thuringiaca is native: Altay, Buryatiya, Kazakhstan, North Caucasus, Sakhalin, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, West Siberia, Central European Russia, Czechia-Slovakia, East European Russia, France, Germany, Italy, Krym, North European Russia, Northwest European Russia, Romania, South European Russia, Switzerland, Ukraine AltayBuryatiyaKazakhstanNorth CaucasusSakhalinTranscaucasusTürkiyeWest SiberiaCentral European RussiaCzechia-SlovakiaEast European RussiaFranceGermanyItalyKrymNorth European RussiaNorthwest European RussiaRomaniaSouth European RussiaSwitzerlandUkraine
Native distribution of Potentilla thuringiaca, 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
Central European Russia RUC EUROPE
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
East European Russia RUE
France FRA
Germany GER
Italy ITA
Krym KRY
North European Russia RUN
Northwest European Russia RUW
Romania ROM
South European Russia RUS
Switzerland SWI
Ukraine UKR
Altay ALT ASIA-TEMPERATE
Buryatiya BRY
Kazakhstan KAZ
North Caucasus NCS
Sakhalin SAK
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
West Siberia WSB

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 46 in flower of 60 examined

Peak flowering in Jun. Each bar is the share of Potentilla thuringiaca 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. 46 of 60 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 9 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 1,163 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -16.9 °C -11.0 °C -9.2 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 21.3 °C 22.9 °C 24.4 °C
Annual rainfall 509 mm 650 mm 767 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 69 mm 104 mm 124 mm

It is found where winters are severely cold. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,163 research-grade observations of Potentilla thuringiaca 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 61 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 assurgens subsp. bouquoyana (Knaf) O.Schwarz
  • Potentilla assurgens subsp. parviflora (Gaudin) O.Schwarz
  • Potentilla assurgens subsp. thuringiaca (Bernh.) O.Schwarz
  • Potentilla assurgens subsp. thuringiaca (Bernh. ex Link) O.Schwarz
  • Potentilla bouquojana Nyman
  • Potentilla buquoyana Knaf
  • Potentilla caucasica Juz.
  • Potentilla chrysantha Rchb.
  • Potentilla chrysantha prol. goldbachii (Rupr.) Th.Wolf
  • Potentilla chrysantha subsp. nestleriana (Tratt.) P.Fourn.
  • Potentilla chrysantha subsp. thuringiaca (Bernh. ex Link) Asch. & Graebn.
  • Potentilla chrysantha subsp. thuringiaca (Bernh. ex Link) Simonk.
  • Potentilla chrysantha var. buquoyana (Knaf) Th.Wolf
  • Potentilla chrysantha var. parviflora (Gaudin) Th.Wolf
  • Potentilla chrysantha var. thuringiaca (Bernh. ex Link) Grecescu
  • Potentilla elongata Goldb. ex Ser.
  • Potentilla elongata Goldb.
  • Potentilla elongata var. goldbachii Rupr.
  • Potentilla goldbachii (Rupr.) Rupr.
  • Potentilla goldbachii unranked elongata Rupr.
  • Potentilla goldbachii unranked humilior Rupr.
  • Potentilla goldbachii unranked tomentosa Rupr.
  • Potentilla helvetica Jord. ex Verl.
  • Potentilla heptaphylla H.J.Coste

and 37 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.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. 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.