Near the beginning of the Headquarters Trail of Medicine Bow National Forest (not far behind the sometimes angry-looking statue of Lincoln on the highest point of I-80 east of Laramie), I spotted several blooms of a species of cinquefoil new to me.  The elegant cinquefoil, Potentilla concinna, appeared on the protected, sunny hillside, reaching towards the warm light.  These yellow blooms might be elegant, but the plant as a whole is easy to miss.  This species keeps its fuzzy leaves–each with five leaflets, hence “cinquefoil”–fairly low to the ground.

I had never heard of cinquefoils before moving to Wyoming, and called all of these types of yellow flowers ‘buttercups’.  Once you become familiar with cinquefoil blooms, though, they become quite distinctive with their five wide petals separated by green, pointy calyx tips.

This plant can also be called early cinquefoil, and I think that’s an accurate name, since it’s the first cinquefoil I have come across this year.