Trevir.
Description
Potentilla lineata is a widespread Asian cinquefoil ranging across the Himalaya and into China, Myanmar and Vietnam, well represented in GBIF with around 519 records from China, Nepal, India, Bhutan, Pakistan and beyond. In GBIF the queried name is treated as a synonym, with Potentilla lineata itself given as the accepted name. It occupies open grassy slopes, forest clearings, banks, pastures and disturbed roadsides through the temperate and subalpine belts, roughly 1500 to 3500 m. The collections cited from Tongsa in Bhutan at 2300 m in June and from Kunol in the Garhwal Himalaya at 2650 m in September show its long flowering season across the monsoon.
It is a perennial herb with a woody rootstock producing erect to ascending, often silky-hairy stems. The leaves are pinnate or digitately compound with toothed, oblong to obovate leaflets that are typically green and appressed-hairy above and densely silvery- or white-tomentose beneath, the strongly impressed venation giving rise to the epithet lineata. The flowers are borne in lax terminal cymes; each has five yellow petals alternating with an epicalyx and five sepals, numerous stamens and many carpels seated on a hairy receptacle. The fruit is an aggregate of small dry achenes.
Potentilla is a large and taxonomically complex genus in which hybridisation and polyploidy blur species boundaries, and P. lineata has accordingly accumulated several synonyms. The silvery indumentum reduces water loss and reflects intense montane radiation. With its broad ecological tolerance and ready colonisation of disturbed ground, the species is common and of no conservation concern, functioning as a characteristic component of Himalayan grazing land and successional grassland.
Author: Trevir. · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China (Rosaceae), Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Soják taxonomic studies of Potentilla