Silverweed

Herbs perennial, stoloniferous. Roots sometimes with fusiform or ellipsoid tubers. Stems prostrate, creeping, together with petioles appressed or subspreading pilose or glabrescent, rooting at nodes and producing plantlets. Radical leaves 2–20 cm including petiole; auricles of stipules connate from base to rounded apex; leaf blade interrupted pinnate with 5–11 pairs of leaflets; terminal leaflet elliptic, obovate-elliptic, or oblong-elliptic, 1–2.5 × 0.5–1 cm, abaxially densely appressed silvery sericeous, rarely glabrescent, base decurrent in apical pair of leaflets, margin sharply many serrate; cauline leaves: auricles of stipules sheathing at base. Flower solitary, 1.5–2.5 cm in diam.; pedicel 2.5–8 cm, pilose. Epicalyx segments elliptic or elliptic-lanceolate, margin usually 2- or 3-fid, rarely entire. Petals yellow, obovate, apex rounded. Style lateral. Achenes not seen. Fl. and fr. Jun–Aug. 2n = 28, 42.

Europe, Asia, Tasmania, New Zealand, America.

Gansu, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Nei Mongol, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Sichuan, Xinjiang, Xizang, Yunnan [Asia, Australia (Tasmania), Europe, North America, Pacific Islands (New Zealand), South America (Chile)].

3600-4600 m

Meadows, grasslands on mountain slopes, river and ditch banks, wet places, roadsides; 500--4100 m.

Potentilla anserina var. nuda Gaudin; P. anserina var. sericea Hayne; P. anserina var. viridis W. D. J. Koch.