Potentilla discolor

Potentilla discolor, the silverweed cinquefoil, is a small perennial herb of the Rosaceae widespread across China, Korea, Japan and the Russian Far East. It grows 10–40 cm tall from a stout, woody, often tuberous-thickened rootstock. The leaves are pinnately compound with 5–9 oblong leaflets that are dark green above and conspicuously white-tomentose beneath, giving the plant its specific epithet ("two-coloured"). Flowering stems bear loose terminal cymes of bright yellow, five-petalled flowers about 1–1.5 cm across in late spring and summer. Fruits are dry achenes enclosed by the persistent calyx. It grows on sunny grassy slopes, dry meadows, open woodland margins and field edges from lowland to montane elevations. In China the dried whole plant is the recognised herbal drug known as fan bai cao.