Potentilla cuneata
Habitat: sun or part shade
Flowering: mid summer to early autumn
Height: 5 cm
Width: 25 cm
Soil: with some grit
Habitat: sun or part shade
Flowering: mid summer to early autumn
Height: 5 cm
Width: 25 cm
Soil: with some grit
This is a large genus, including rightly popular shrubs that flower all summer, as well as many smaller plants, suitable for the rock garden. They are known as cinquefoils, although not all have the leaves divided into five leaflets. Sibbaldia and Sibbaldiopsis are closely related, both having the tips of the leaves divided into three broad teeth.
Potentilla cuneata KR is a collection from Vietnam of this excellent rock garden or raised bed plant, which just keeps on flowering from summer through to autumn. It has bright yellow, upward-facing flowers scattered over the low mats of leaves, on very short stems.
| Potentilla atrosanguinea var. argyrophylla CC6945 makes a clump of slightly hairy leaves, rather like those of a strawberry, with stems carrying a succession of flowers, orange-yellow, brighter and deeper orange at the centre. | |
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| Potentilla CC5836 is small enough for the rock garden. It makes good clumps of softly downy pinnate leaves, and has clusters of bright yellow flowers. | |
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| Potentilla cuneata CC6951 is a Nepalese collection of this low alpine plant, which makes wide mats of bright green foliage, each small leaf with three teeth at the end. The mats produce an apparently endless sequence of stemless, quite large, bright yellow flowers. | |
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| Potentilla 'Etna' is a small herbaceous plant, probably a selection of Potentilla atrosanguinea, making a tight clump of slightly hairy leaves, very like those of a strawberry. The short stems carry the exceptionally dark red flowers. | |
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| Potentilla fruticosa 'Pumila' is a variety of the well-known Potentilla shrub, which is now cultivated in a range of colours. This compact version (pumila means small) comes in any colour so long as it is yellow, although no doubt the hybridisers will get busy on it, as it is a really neat, high alpine plant. It is also known as Potentilla fruticosa var. arbuscula, Potentilla arbuscula var. pumila, and just about any other combination of these names. | |
| Potentilla nepalensis has rosettes of fresh green strawberry-like foliage covered in summer by rosy-pink flowers. A reliable ground-cover plant for a sunny position. | |
| Potentilla nepalensis 'Miss Willmott' is a herbaceous perennial, which has pretty, bright rosy-pink open flowers on sturdy long stems that often sprawl (but do not layer) at ground level. This is an old variety, which has become quite popular and well known. | |
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| Potentilla ovina var. ovina NNS08-374 is a ground-hugging high alpine, with tight tufts of pinnate leaves packed into prostrate mats. The leaves are covered with silky hairs, so that the whole mat is a soft, silvery grey mass, on which the bright yellow flowers sit. From Utah, so definitely wanting protection from excessive overhead water during out wet summers. | |
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| Potentilla peduncularis CC5717 is very widespread in some parts of the Himalaya, and is therefore sometimes neglected. It has greyish green, pinnate leaves, in a fairly upright tuft, with an overall 'shuttlecock' impression. The bright yellow 'buttercups' flowers are produced in abundance on short, upright stems. | |
| Potentilla aff. polyphylla ex CPHW314 is small enough for the rock garden. It makes good clumps of pinnate leaves, and has clusters of bright yellow flowers. | |
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| Potentilla recta var. sulphurea is a short herbaceous plant, with flowers of a lovely soft primrose yellow, much better than the more usual bright yellow variety. | |
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| Sibbaldia procumbens is a tufted rhizomatous alpine with unusual blue-green leaves divided at the tips into 3 tooth-like leaflets. Small, delicate saucer-shaped yellow flowers are borne on reddish stems. | |
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| Sibbaldiopsis tridentata comes from the prairie states of North America, so likes a sunny place. It makes low clumps of strawberry-like leaves and has lots of white flowers. Its common name is three-toothed cinquefoil, but although cinquefoil mean five leaves, each leaf actually has three leaflets, like a strawberry, but in this case each of these leaves does have three broad teeth at the end. This makes it rather like a Sibbaldia, but in fact this species has been placed in a new genus of its own, Sibbaldiopsis. |