Photo: Olivier Pichard, CC BY-SA 3.0 (via Wikimedia Commons)
Creeping Cinquefoil
Potentilla reptans
Also known as Five-Finger Grass, Five-Leaf Grass, Running Buttercup, Cinquefoil
Key benefits
✦Traditional uses
✦Creeping cinquefoil has quietly grown along footpaths and pasture edges for centuries, and old herbals rarely overlooked it. Culpeper and other seventeenth century herbalists praised it as a cooling astringent, recommending its leaves and roots for fevers, loose bowels, bleeding gums, and sore throats. Country folk brewed it into gargles for mouth ulcers and toothache, and dabbed strong decoctions onto minor cuts and grazes to help draw them closed. Its close cousin, tormentil (Potentilla erecta), eventually became the more famous astringent in modern herbalism, but for generations the two five-fingered leaves were gathered and used much the same way.
How to grow & use it
✦The full apothecary for Creeping Cinquefoil
Traditional remedies and step-by-step preparations, a complete growing guide, and how to harvest, dry, and store it, all unlocked with HerbLens Unlimited.
- ✦Remedies & preparations
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- ✦Meadowsweet
- ✦Plantain
- ✦Chamomile
- ✦Tormentil (Potentilla erecta)
- ✦Agrimony
“For the humble roadside astringent that has soothed sore mouths and unsettled stomachs since long before the corner pharmacy existed.”
The name cinquefoil comes from the French cinq feuilles, meaning five leaves, describing the plant's neatly fingered leaflets. Medieval folk sometimes called it five-finger grass and treated it as a small, humble echo of the human hand, gathered underfoot along the very paths people walked every day.
Creeping cinquefoil's tannins can be harsh on the stomach in large amounts and may reduce iron absorption if used heavily, so it's best kept to moderate amounts.