This species prefers limy, springy places and marshes and is more or less frequent in the lake area with a few outlying posts south of it.

Common Name: shrubby cinquefoil

Duration: Perennial

Nativity: Native

Lifeform: Shrub

Wetland Status: None

General: Deciduous shrub, mostly 0.1-1 m (0.7-3 ft) tall; stems much branched, reddish brown, shreddy; twigs silky pubescent, becoming glabrous with age.

Leaves: Alternate, pinnately compound, 1-5 cm long; leaflets 3-7, linear-oblong, 0.5-2 cm long, green above, paler beneath, silky pubescent on one or both surfaces, margins entire, somewhat rolled under; stipules broadly lanceolate, membranous; petiole 0.5-1 cm long.

Flowers: Solitary or in a cyme; hypanthium shallowly cup-shaped, silky villous; bractlets 5, narrowly lanceolate, 4.2-6.5 mm long, silky hairy; sepals 5, 4-6 mm long, silky hairy; petals 5, rounded, 5-15 mm long, yellow; stamens 20-25.

Fruits: Achene, 1.5-2 mm long, densely white-hairy.

Ecology: Found in moist meadows, streambanks and other wet habitats from 6,000-11,000 ft (1829-3353 m), flowers June-September.

Distribution: Apache and Coconino counties; Alaska to Newfoundland, south to southwestern U.S.

Notes: This species, which makes an attractive ornamental, prefers sun but is not highly drought tolerant. It is often top-killed by fire but may vigorously resprout following low to moderate-severity fires, and is browsed by wild and domestic ungulates.

Editor: Springer et al. 2011

Bushy-branched shrub to 1 m; lvs numerous, short-petioled, pinnately compound with 5-7 crowded, narrow, entire, often revolute lfls 1-2 cm, the 3 terminal ones often confluent; fls solitary or few at the ends of the branches, yellow, 2-3 cm wide; bractlets lanceolate, as long as but much narrower than the ovate, acuminate sep; ovaries and achenes villous; style lateral; 2n=14, 28. Wet meadows, bogs, and shores, especially in calcareous soil; circumboreal, s. to N.J., n. Ill., S.D., and Ariz., and reported from Tenn. June-Sept. (Dasiphora f.) Our plants, and many of the Eurasian ones, are diploid and hermaphrodite, and have been segregated as P. floribunda Pursh. Typical P. fruticosa, of Siberia and n. Europe, is tetraploid and functionally dioecious.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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