Potentilla chinensis Seeds | Chinese Cinquefoil

Silver-backed divided leaves and small yellow flowers of Chinese Cinquefoil — Chinese Cinquefoil (*Potentilla chinensis*): Rosaceae, native to dry grassland in eastern Asia.

LATIN NAME: Potentilla chinensis

COMMON NAME: Chinese Cinquefoil

Plant Profile

Chinese cinquefoil is a low, tufted perennial of dry, sunny grassland in eastern Asia, growing twenty to fifty centimetres tall from a stout, woody rootstock. The leaves are pinnate, with five to fifteen narrow leaflets that are green above and silvery-white with dense hairs beneath, and they are arranged in a rosette at the base with a few smaller ones on the flowering stems.

From June to August it carries loose clusters of small, bright yellow, five-petalled flowers, each about a centimetre across. The whole plant has a silvery, downy look, and it is one of the cinquefoils that grows in the poorest, driest ground. It is used in Chinese medicine under the name wei ling cai, and it is gathered from the wild rather than cultivated for that purpose.

Science & Biotechnology

Potentilla is one of the largest genera in the rose family, with several hundred species, and it is a difficult one because the species hybridise and because apomixis, seed set without fertilisation, occurs in some groups, so a plant may produce seedlings that are clones of the parent.

Potentilla chinensis is placed in the group with pinnate leaves and a woody base, which includes the European Potentilla recta and the North American species of dry prairie. The silvery underside of the leaf is a dense layer of hairs that reduces water loss and reflects light, an adaptation to the dry, exposed sites the plant favours. The rootstock is rich in tannins, and the whole plant is astringent, which is the basis of its medicinal use and also the reason it is unpalatable to grazing animals.

Uses & Benefits

In Chinese medicine the whole plant is used as an astringent and antidiarrhoeal, and it is also applied to boils and to inflamed skin; it appears in the pharmacopoeia as wei ling cai, and it should not be confused with the ornamental potentillas sold in garden centres.

In the garden it is grown in a rock garden, on a dry bank or at the front of a border, where its silvery foliage and small yellow flowers make a fine, low mound. It needs sharp drainage and full sun and it resents rich soil and damp, which rot the crown. It is a useful plant for a gravel garden and for the spaces between paving, where little else will grow, and its flowers are visited by small bees and hoverflies through the summer.

Growing from Seed

Sow in spring at 15-18 °C on the surface of a gritty compost and cover lightly, since the seed needs some light. Germination is usually good within three weeks. Because some cinquefoils are apomictic, the seedlings may come true to the parent, but in a mixed planting they can also be hybrids, so a named form should be propagated by division.

Prick the seedlings out when they are large enough to handle and grow them on in a cool frame. Plant out in autumn in poor, free-draining soil in full sun, and add grit to the planting hole if the soil is heavy. Water only until established. Cut the old flowering stems back in late summer, and divide the clumps every three or four years in spring to keep them vigorous and flowering freely.

Our Take

A low, silver-leaved cinquefoil for the driest, poorest part of the garden, with small yellow flowers over a long season.

Herb Seeds