Creeping cinquefoil
Potentilla reptans
Family · Rosaceae · Harmless
The creeper with five-petalled yellow flowers that spreads across damp lawns and verges, running along the ground on threads that root every metre. It was a plant of witchcraft and pharmacy, and today is mostly a lawn weed.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Streams and ditches · Town and roadside
Also known asfive-leaf grass, creeping tormentil
How to tell it
Five toothed leaflets radiating from a single point, like the fingers of an open hand. Solitary yellow five-petalled flowers on a long stalk from the axil. Long runners along the ground.
What it is confused with
Wild strawberry
Fragaria vesca
Count the leaflets and look at flower colour: five leaflets and a yellow flower here, three leaflets and a white flower on wild strawberry. The mistake has no consequence, but it yields no strawberries either.
Open sheet →What it is for
An astringent root traditionally used in gargles and on wounds in European folk medicine. No relevant food use.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.