Spring cinquefoil

Potentilla tabernaemontani is a low, mat-forming evergreen perennial herb of the Rosaceae family, typically 5 to 15 centimetres tall, spreading horizontally by rooting prostrate stems to form dense, ground-hugging carpets over rocks and dry turf. The palmately compound leaves are mostly basal and long-petioled, with five obovate to oblong leaflets 0.5 to 2.5 centimetres long whose distal halves are coarsely toothed; the leaflets are dark green and glabrous to sparsely hairy above and paler, more silky-hairy beneath, with conspicuous appressed hairs along the veins. From spring through early summer, slender, branching flowering stems carry small, terminal, few-flowered cymes of bright yellow five-petalled flowers 8 to 15 millimetres across, each petal slightly notched at the apex and longer than the green, awl-shaped, alternating sepals and epicalyx segments. The fruit is a cluster of small dry achenes enclosed in the persistent calyx. Native to dry, sunny limestone grasslands, rocky slopes and open woodland fringes across much of central and southern Europe and adjacent western Asia.