Potentilla erecta Seeds | Tormentil

Small, pale brown Tormentil seeds, wrinkled and angular, on a plain background — Tormentil (*Potentilla erecta*): Rosaceae, native to acid heaths, moors and rough grassland across Europe and western Asia.

LATIN NAME: Potentilla erecta

COMMON NAME: Tormentil

Plant Profile

Tormentil is a low, creeping perennial of the rose family, with slender stems that root where they touch the ground and a woody, reddish rhizome that stains the fingers when cut. Its leaves are divided into three or five narrow leaflets, and its flowers are the giveaway: four yellow petals, not the five of a typical cinquefoil, which is why it was once placed in a genus of its own.

It grows on heaths, moors, acid grassland and open woodland across Europe and western Asia, and it is one of the few herbs that survives both heavy grazing and burning. On a Welsh hillside or a Norwegian moor it is often the plant that keeps the sward green between the heather.

Science & Biotechnology

The rhizome contains up to twenty per cent tannins, mostly condensed types, which is an unusually high figure for a European herb and the reason tormentil was a standard astringent in folk medicine for wounds, diarrhoea and sore gums. The same tannins make the root useful in tanning and give a red-brown dye with iron salts.

Its four-petalled flower is a small anomaly in Potentilla and has been used in keys and in phylogenetic work to separate the species from its five-petalled relatives. Tormentil is also an indicator species in vegetation surveys: its presence marks old, unimproved, acid pasture that has never been reseeded or heavily limed.

Uses & Benefits

The root was chewed for toothache and used as a gargle, and a decoction was taken for diarrhoea; the plant appears in British and German herbals from the sixteenth century onwards. Modern herbal practice still uses tormentil root for mild diarrhoea and for inflamed gums, usually as a tincture or a mouthwash.

In the garden it is a plant for an acid lawn, a heath bed or the edge of a wild path, where its low mat and long succession of small yellow flowers from June to September make a quiet ground cover. It will not tolerate rich, limed soil or deep shade, and it needs mowing or grazing to keep it compact.

Growing from Seed

Sow on the surface of an acid, sandy compost in spring, press the seed in and cover it with a pinch of grit; light helps germination. Keep the tray at 15 to 18 °C and moist but not wet, and expect seedlings in three to six weeks, unevenly.

Pot the seedlings on while they are small and grow them in a cool frame for their first year. Plant out into acid, poor soil in full sun, and water only until they are established. The plant spreads by rooting stems, so it makes a mat within two seasons; lift and divide it in spring if it becomes thin in the middle.

Our Take

A small, tough moorland herb with one of the highest tannin contents in the European flora. It wants acid soil and light, and it makes a patient, long-lived ground cover.

Herb Seeds