Distribution: Throughout southern Siberia, temperate and subarctic regions of east- 

 ern Asia. 



Potentilla ternata (Maxim.) Freyn in Oesterr. Bot. Zeitschr. (1902) p. 62 (sep. p. 29). 

 P. fragariodes L. var. ternata Maxim. Mel. Biol. IX. p. 159. P. Freyniana Bornmuller, 

 Wolf, Monogr. Gatt. Potentilla p. 6n9. forma [Tab. VIII]. 



The specimens found by me, are distinguished by llieir high, vigorous, fur- 

 rowed, reddish-brown stems, to 30 cm. high, furnished with long, scattered, spreading, 

 partly somewhat curved. N\hite liairs. whereby much recalling Potentilla fragarioides var.- 

 tijpica, the hairs of which, however, are by far denser. 



The specimens are exceedingly flowery; tlie pedicels are long, from 3 to 5 cm., fine 

 and slender, and are distinguished by being relaxed and curved, whereby the flowers, at 

 any rate after falling out, become drooping. In some of the pedicels are to be found small, 

 entire, toothed or di^^ded bracteoles. Stolons are wanting, at any rate in the specimens 

 collected. The outer lanceolate sepals are only slightly shorter than the inner ones, 

 which are more triangular, and acute. The petals are somewhat longer than the calyx, 

 ovate, subobtuse, not indented at tire summit. In the diameter of the flowers, being from 12 

 to 14 mm., the specimens somewhat exceed the typical species, and approach, to some 

 extent, var. 9/o/!d/7?ora Wolf, 1. c, known only from Japan, from which, however, they 

 also differ by their great floweriness. The basal leaves are comparatively long-petioled, as 

 a rule digitately tri-foliolate. Some of the leaves, however, are characteristic in possessing 

 a lower pair of leaflets farther down the petiole, whereby the leaf becomes distinctly pin- 

 nate. The lower pair is generally placed some way down the petiole, whereby the distance 

 between the 2 pairs of pinnae is generally comparatively great (Tab. VIII). Leaves 

 with more than 2 pairs of pinnae have never been observed by me, and tlie second pair of 

 pinnae are frequently reduced to mere scales, if an^ihing, which is most usual, and from 

 where there is every transition to specimens in which the said lower pair of leaflets are 

 lai-ge and well developed. Their shape is, for the rest, much the same as that of the upper 

 pair of leaflets, and, like this one, with rather coarse, acute teetli at the margin. From spe- 

 cimens in which all of the basal leaves are 3-foliolate, there is to be found every transition 

 to forms where at least a great part of the basal leaves are pinnatifid. Thus, from the 

 typical P. ternata there are, chiefly on account of the shape of the leaves, and for tlie 

 ■ rest, also in consequence of the pubescence, distinct transitions to forms most properly to 

 1)0 retei'rcd to P. fragarioides. 



Similar specimens, in which some of the basal leaves are furnished witli a rudimen- 

 tary pinna about the middle of their petioles, have previously been found by Makino at 

 Yokogura yama, on the isle of Shikoku (Japan). Wolf, when mentioning tliese, indica- 

 tes that they may be bastards between P. ternata and the eastern variety Sprengeliana of 

 P. fragarioides The carpels in the sjiecimens collected by me, seemed, however, to be well 

 developed; they are small, somewhat more than 1 mm. long, anything like bean-shaped, 

 narrower at one end, yellowish white, slightly rugose on tlie surface, and a little longer 



288 



