Roses and Apples AI 
The well known Silver Weed (P. anserina) has 
flowers similar to, but smaller than those of the 
Cinquefoil, and its leaves are divided into many leaf- 
lets arranged pinnately, or, to be more correct, in an 
interruptedly pinnate manner, for in between every 
two large leaflets on each side of the “midrib” there 
is a tiny little leaflet. The leaves stand erectly, and 
are silvery on the back. 
Yet another Potentilla is called the 
Barren Strawberry (P. fragariastrwm). 
Its leaf is divided into three leaflets 
only, which are very hairy on the under- 
side and supported on hairy leafstalks. 
These leaves grow in tufts round the tough 
branching rootstock, from which also arise flower- 
ing stems bearing two or three white flowers. Now 
this plant bears so strong a superficial resemblance 
to the Wild Strawberry (Fragaria vesca) that when 
they are both beginning to bloom the non-botanical 
lover of nature fails to distinguish them. But when all 
these Potentillas we have named have become fertilised 
by insects crawling over stamens and carpels, and the 
petals drop away—what do we find? A crowd of little 
beaked nutlets (achenes) on the flat-topped head of 
the flower-stalk, surrounded by the calyx—all dry 
and uninviting, and probably trusting to the wind, 
and the passage of animals over them, to separate 
them from the receptacle and disperse them, so that 
the contained seed in each may have a chance to 
germinate at some distance from the parent plant. 
Still one more Potentilla we must name ere we pass 
on. Thisis the Marsh Cinquefoil (P. comarum), which 
we must seek in boggy ground, where its long purplish 
Straw berry-leaf 
