Spring cinquefoil
Potentilla verna
Family · Rosaceae · Harmless
The cushion of yellow five-petalled flowers appearing early in mountain meadows and rock ledges, long before most high-altitude flowers open.
Uplands · Fields and pasture · Scrubland
Also known asalpine cinquefoil
How to tell it
A creeping plant in a dense tuft, with leaves divided into five to seven toothed leaflets radiating from a point, like an open hand. Bright yellow flowers one to two centimetres, with five inverted-heart petals and a visible ring of sepals behind. It grows on mountain rock and meadow. Range: mainly a Spanish plant, practically absent from Portugal.
What it is confused with
Creeping buttercup
Ranunculus repens
Both yellow with five petals. Look behind the flower: cinquefoil has two rings of sepals, buttercup only one. And cinquefoil's leaf has five to seven leaflets in a hand, buttercup's three. Only the buttercup irritates skin.
Open sheet →What it is for
No use. It is good for practising the difference between a five-petalled rose relative and a buttercup: rose relatives have a second ring of sepals behind the true ones, the epicalyx, and buttercups do not.