Birding Travels
In North America

Thurber's Cinquefoil - Potentilla thurberi thurberi
Carbonate Creek Canyon
Black Range, New Mexico, USA
July 27, 2015

A walk up mountain canyons in July will often be punctuated by a bit of bright red, the flowers of the Scarlet Cinquefoil, Potentilla thurberi.  This species is also known as Thurber’s Cinquefoil and Red Cinquefoil.  A commercial variety is known as Monarch’s Velvet.  The nominate subspecies has the scientific synonym of P. rubida.  We found the flowers pictured in this blog in the canyon of Carbonate Creek on the east side of the Black Range on July 27 of this year, they are of the nominate subspecies.

There are three recognized subspecies of this species; P. t. sanguinea (found only in Arizona in the United States), P. t. atrorubens, and the nominate form (both of which are found in Arizona and New Mexico within the United States).  The species is limited to mountainous areas between 6,000 and 9,000’ in elevation in the areas shown below (light green means that the species is native and not rare in the county) and in Chihuahua, Mexico.

This species (nominate subspecies) was first described by Asa Gray in 1854.  The two other subspecies were first described by Thomas Henry Kearney Jr./Robert Hibbs Peebles in 1939.

Range map courtesy of BONAP.