Potentilla vernaL.

WFO wfo-0001009786 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Potentilla verna, photographed by Josh Hedley
fig. a Josh Hedley, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-10 / obs. 204923710
Potentilla verna, photographed by Lucie Karna
fig. b Lucie Karna, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195602613
Potentilla verna, photographed by Gabriel Mayrhofer
fig. c Gabriel Mayrhofer, CC0 1.0 / obs. 194396512
Potentilla verna, photographed by Bee Together
fig. d Bee Together, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194720623
Potentilla verna, photographed by ahabo
fig. e ahabo, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190303157
Potentilla verna, photographed by Jochen Essig
fig. f Jochen Essig, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187675036
Potentilla verna, photographed by Justine Faure
fig. g Justine Faure, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187290970
Potentilla verna, photographed by Tristan Haab
fig. h Tristan Haab, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186553596

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 20 botanical countries

Regions where Potentilla verna is native: Albania, Austria, Baltic States, Belgium, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland AlbaniaAustriaBaltic StatesBelgiumCorseCzechia-SlovakiaDenmarkFinlandFranceGermanyHungaryItalyNetherlandsNorwayPortugalRomaniaSpainSwedenSwitzerland
Native distribution of Potentilla verna, 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
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baltic States BLT
Belgium BGM
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
Denmark DEN
Finland FIN
France FRA
Germany GER
Great Britain GRB
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Netherlands NET
Norway NOR
Portugal POR
Romania ROM
Spain SPA
Sweden SWE
Switzerland SWI

Not drawn on the map: Great Britain. We hold no public-domain boundary for this region, so it is listed rather than guessed at.

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 485 in flower of 500 examined

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Potentilla verna 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. 485 of 500 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 4 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 2,002 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -7.2 °C -2.1 °C 1.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 19.1 °C 23.3 °C 28.4 °C
Annual rainfall 564 mm 863 mm 1,522 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 89 mm 164 mm 272 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 2,002 research-grade observations of Potentilla verna 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 157 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.

  • Dynamidium agrivagum (Timb.-Lagr.) Timb.-Lagr.
  • Dynamidium australe Timb.-Lagr.
  • Dynamidium montivagum (Timb.-Lagr.) Timb.-Lagr.
  • Dynamidium stipulaceum Timb.-Lagr.
  • Dynamidium vernum (L.) Fourr.
  • Fragaria verna (L.) Crantz
  • Potentilla adamsiana (Schultz) Zimmeter
  • Potentilla aestiva (Haller f.) Bamb.
  • Potentilla agrivaga Timb.-Lagr.
  • Potentilla arenaria subvar. parceglandulosa (Domin) Th.Wolf
  • Potentilla auripetala P.J.Müll. ex Th.Wolf
  • Potentilla aurulenta Gremli
  • Potentilla australis Timb.-Lagr.
  • Potentilla billotii Boulay
  • Potentilla candollei Jeanb. & Timb.-Lagr.
  • Potentilla croceolata (Johanss.) Johanss.
  • Potentilla explanata Zimmeter
  • Potentilla hirsuta (DC.) Hervier
  • Potentilla incana Moench
  • Potentilla mascunii P.Monts.
  • Potentilla minor Giraudias
  • Potentilla minor Gilib.
  • Potentilla minor f. erythrodes Johanss.
  • Potentilla montivaga Timb.-Lagr.

and 133 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. 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.