134 COMMON CREEPING CINQUEEOIL. 



graceful sprays of its foliage are lying among 

 the grass. 



The greater number of our Cinquefoils are 

 mountain flowers, gracing the banks of paths 

 traversed by the footsteps of few travellers, 

 and where their yellow or white blossoms live 

 and die ungathered and unseen. Some of 

 them, however, like the Creeping Cinquefoil, 

 are common flowers. Such is the white- 

 flowered strawberry-leaved Cinquefoil {Foten- 

 tilla Fragariastrimi), which, in March and 

 April, has leaves and flowers so like the straw- 

 berry plants, that all save the botanist would 

 deem its blossom the harbinger of the ruddy 

 fruit of summer. The Hoary Cinquefoil 

 {Potentilla argentea), with its flowers smaller 

 than those of the creeping kind, and its 

 leaves downy on their under surface, is less 

 frequent in meadows and by road sides on a 

 gravelly soil, blooming in June ; and frequent 

 as any of the species, is the handsome Silver- 

 weed {Potentilla cmserina), with its leaves pale 

 beneath, with a profuse quantity of silky down, 

 and flowers shaped exactly like those of the 

 eno;ravinoj. 



