ROSACEAE (ROSE FAMILY) 209 
The weed springs from a slender taproot, fringed with many 
thready rootlets. Leaves thickly tufted, spreading, six to eighteen 
inches long, pinnately compound with seven to twenty-five oblong, 
tooth-edged leaflets, the larger ones at the tip, decreasing in size 
inward to the long, grooved petiole, dark green and smooth above 
but underneath white with fine, silken hairs. Thrust out from 
among the tufted leaves are a number of jointed runners, one to 
three feet long, the young plants sitting on the nodes until the 
parent has pushed them out a convenient distance for striking root 
and starting an independent growth. Flowers solitary, lifted on 
slender, erect, axillary peduncles, bright yellow, nearly an inch 
broad; calyx-lobes acute, silky-hairy; these fold over the seed- 
heads until the smooth, small achenes have ripened, when they 
reopen and the nodding stems scatter them abroad. 
Means of control 
Good drainage is all that is necessary in 
order to drive out the Silverweed, but in 
places where that is impracticable the plants 
should be closely cut in June, before the 
first seeds fall or any runners have taken root. 
COMMON CINQUEFOIL OR FIVE-FINGER 
Potentilla canadénsis, L. 
Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and 
by stolons. . 
Time of bloom: April to August. 
Seed-time: June to September. 
Range: Maineand Quebec to Minnesota, south- 
ward to Georgia and Oklahoma. 
Habitat: Dry soil; fields, meadows, pastures, 
and waste places. 
Stems tufted, spreading, stoloniferous, six 
inches to two feet long, very slender, the 
runners thin as wire, often reddish, finely 
Fie. 151. — Com- 
a mon Five-finger (Po- 
hairy. Leaves palmately five-foliate, the tentilla canadensis). 
leaflets oblong obovate, green and smooth x}. 
P 
