Schur
Description
Potentilla polyphylla is a Himalayan and Sino-Himalayan cinquefoil ranging through Nepal, north-east India, Bhutan, south-west China, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Pakistan, with 340 georeferenced occurrences. It is a plant of open alpine and subalpine habitats, occupying grassy slopes, meadows, rocky banks, stream margins and the moist turf around glacial lakes. The Bhutan collections at Tsochenchen (3550 m) and Dur-Tso-Chu (3500 m), both in June, place it firmly in the high-alpine zone, typically between about 3000 and 4300 m. GBIF treats the supplied name as a synonym while retaining Potentilla polyphylla as the accepted name; it has at times been confused with Potentilla leuconota.
It is a perennial herb arising from a stout, woody rootstock, producing tufted basal leaves and ascending flowering stems. The leaves are pinnately compound (interrupted-pinnate) with numerous small, closely set, oblong-obovate leaflets that are sharply toothed and silky-hairy, especially beneath. The flowers are borne in lax terminal cymes; each has five green sepals alternating with an epicalyx, five rounded yellow petals, numerous stamens, and many free carpels seated on a hairy receptacle. The fruit is a cluster of small dry achenes.
Within the large genus Potentilla the species sits among the pinnate-leaved high-mountain cinquefoils, a taxonomically intricate group where leaf division and indumentum provide key diagnostic characters. The open yellow flowers are pollinated by a variety of alpine insects. Widely distributed across the Himalayan arc and tolerant of grazed pasture, it is not regarded as threatened, and like other alpine Potentilla species it has local ethnobotanical uses.
Author: Schur · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of Bhutan, Flora of China, Flora of Nepal, Soják Potentilla taxonomic revisions