Potentilla freyniana

Potentilla freyniana is a low, perennial herb of the rose family native to East Asia, including China, Korea, Japan and the Russian Far East. It grows from a short rhizome and produces both basal leaves and slender, often reddish, creeping or ascending stems that can root at the nodes to form new plantlets. The leaves are palmately or ternately compound, typically with three obovate, coarsely toothed leaflets that are green above and paler, somewhat hairy beneath. In spring the plant bears small, five-petalled yellow flowers, solitary or in loose cymes, each with a ring of stamens around a central cluster of carpels seated on a hairy receptacle. The fruit is an aggregate of small dry achenes. It favours grassy slopes, woodland margins, streambanks and moist disturbed ground at low to moderate elevations, where it can spread to form loose mats.