code: 635
A gorgeous garden plant
Family: Rosaceae
Common name: NEPAL CINQUEFOIL
Plant Classification: Hardy perennial
Maximum Height: 60 cm
Sprays of charming, multi-coloured, red-eyed, pink and yellow flowers open on sprawling stems in July and August. A gorgeous garden plant, although its home is grazing grounds and cultivated areas from 2100 – 2700 metres high in Pakistan to Central Nepal!
Sowing advice:
For best results, sow seeds immediately onto a good soil-based compost. Cover the seeds with fine grit or compost to approximately their own depth. They can be sown at any time, and germination can sometimes be quicker if kept at 15 to 20 degrees C. However, we sow most seeds in an unheated greenhouse and wait for natural germination as many seeds have built-in dormancy mechanisms, and often wait for spring before emerging regardless of when they are sown. But spring sowing will obviously give them a full season of growth if successful germination occurs.
Culture:
Easily grown in average, medium, well-drained soils in full sun to part shade. Prefers light, well-drained, sandy loams. Plants come respectably true from seed.
Noteworthy Characteristics:
Potentilla nepalensis is native to the Himalayas in Nepal. It is a clump-forming perennial that typically grows to 15-18” tall and to 24” wide. Branching, wiry stems clad with palmate, compound, strawberry-like leaves form a sprawling foliage mound that is covered with open cup-shaped purplish-red flowers in summer. It features single flowers (1” diameter) of carmine rose with dark red centers, each flower having five separated and evenly-spaced, heart-shaped petals. Blooms in late spring through much of the summer. Each palmate leaf has five hairy, coarsely toothed, obovate to oblanceolate leaflets. Cinquefoil means five-leaved in reference to the foliage.
Genus name from Latin potens meaning powerful is in reference to the reputed medicinal properties of the plant.
Specific epithet means of Nepal.
‘Ron McBeath’ is a compact cultivar that grows to only 12” tall. Cultivar name honors Ron McBeath, a former assistant curator of plants at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland.
