D.Don
Description
Potentilla microphylla D.Don is a dwarf, cushion-forming cinquefoil of the high Himalaya and Tibetan borderlands, occurring through China, India, Nepal and Bhutan. Reliable verbatim occurrence and country totals in the source record are unfortunately conflated with family-level aggregate figures, so the very large occurrence count and the European-dominated country list cited there pertain to the family Rosaceae rather than to this species, which is genuinely a high-alpine Himalayan endemic. It grows on exposed rocky ridges, screes, gravelly flats and crevices, typically between about 3500 and 5000 m. The illustrated plants come from Labana in Bhutan (4100 m, June), Khiar Kutti in Garhwal, India (3900 m, June), and Yume Samdong in Sikkim (4400 m, August), all severe high-alpine stations.
The plant forms dense, low cushions or mats from a woody, much-branched rootstock clothed in persistent old leaf bases. The leaves are crowded, small and pinnate with several pairs of tiny, closely set leaflets (the epithet microphylla, small-leaved), the leaflets often coriaceous, revolute-margined and silky or glabrescent. The flowers are usually solitary on short stalks barely exceeding the foliage, with five yellow, broadly obcordate petals longer than the sepals, an epicalyx, numerous stamens and a central cluster of carpels. The fruit is an aggregate of small dry achenes seated on a hairy receptacle.
Within Potentilla this species belongs to the dwarf, densely caespitose alpine cinquefoils, its compact cushion habit conserving warmth and moisture against wind and intense radiation. It is readily distinguished from the finely dissected P. coriandrifolia by its small, regularly pinnate, leathery leaflets. The species is widespread across its high-elevation belt and not of conservation concern, but is a characteristic component of fragile alpine cushion communities.
Author: D.Don · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Flora of China, Flora of Bhutan, Annotated Checklist of the Flowering Plants of Nepal, Soják monograph of Potentilla