Three Spring Flowering Cinquefoil Species You Can See in the Loire Valley

Cinquefoil plants look a lot like strawberry plants, and that's because they are in the same family. These three flower in early spring and you can see them around the forest trails and hot dry environments.

Vernal Cinquefoil Potentilla verna (Fr. Potentille printaniere) -- favouring dry short grassland, roadsides and sunny slopes, the five segmented leaves are velvety and the flowers bright yellow. It is abundant but localised here on dry gravelly or sandy sites.

Barren Strawberry Potentilla sterilis (Fr. Fraisier sterile) -- this one looks a lot like a Wild Strawberry Fragaria vesca (Fr. Fraisier des bois), but its fruit is dry and does not resemble strawberries. It is frequently mistaken for Wild Strawberry by my walking companions and I have to disabuse them. It is easy to tell the two species apart once you know how though. The leaves of Barren Strawberries are toothed along the edge like Wild Strawberries, but with Barren Strawberries the terminal tooth is shorter than the two either side, unlike Wild Strawberries. It is a good nectar plant and attractive to pollinating insects. It is abundant in the Loire Valley, growing in the semi-shade in cool deep neutral soils, in woods, hedgerows, forestry parcels, heaths, grasslands and along tracks.

Mountain Cinquefoil Potentilla montana (Fr. La Potentille brillante) -- white flowers and trifolate leaves. Despite its name, this is a lowland species of flinty soils. It is rare enough that its presence on a site will allow you to declare a Zone Naturelle d'Intéret Ecologique, Faunistique et Floristique (ZNIEFF). I've only ever seen it once, near Etableau.