Description:

• Perennial, rarely annual herbs or undershrubs, erect or creeping with stoloniferous branches
• Leaves alternate, compound; leaflets solitary, digitate or ternate, often lobed or further divided; stipules adnate to base of petiole
• Inflorescences usually dense, terminal cymes; flowers rarely solitary and axillary; bracteate
• Flowers usually bisexual
• Calyx: tube concave or almost flat, persistent; lobes (4)5(6), erect or spreading, triangular-ovate, valvate; epicalyx present, green as calyx
• Petals (4)5(6), obovate, circular or linear-spathulate, commonly yellow, occasionally white, pink, red or dark purple
• Stamens 10-20(-30), perigynous, inserted with petals; anthers glabrous
• Disc annular or lining receptacle
• Gynoecium usually of many carpels, rarely few-1, inserted on convex or conical, hairy or glabrous receptacle; ovules solitary in each carpel, pendulous; styles long-filiform, caducous, ± lateral; stigma truncate or capitate
• Fruit an apocarpium composed of many 1-seeded achenes on a dry or spongy receptacle enclosed by accrescent calyx; achenes often smooth
• Seed semiglobose; testa thin
• x = 7 (aneuploids, high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Potentilla L.
  • Linnaeus: 495 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 9 (1754)
  • Jussieu: 338 (1789)
  • Nestler: 1 (1816)
  • Kunth: 215 (1823)
  • Candolle: 571 (1825)
  • Endlicher: 1242 (1840)
  • Harvey: 288 (1862)
  • Hooker: 620 (1865)
  • Focke: 34 (1894)
  • Burtt Davy: 318 (1932)
  • Friedrich-Holzhammer: 1 (1968)
  • Zohary: 9 (1972)
  • Bailey & Bailey: 904 (1977)
  • Hedberg: 36 (1989)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 500, mainly temperate to arctic in the northern hemisphere
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Potentilla supina L., regarded as probably indigenous, Namibia, North-West, Gauteng, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and Northern Cape