'Monarch's Velvet'
Red, Crimson, or Scarlet Cinquefoil
"Only on some mounded heaps
Cinquefoil creeps,
By whose line you still may pace
Out the place
Where a great house, bravely planned,
Used to stand."
-Cicely Fox Smith
(1882-1954)
(1882-1954)
Scarlet Cinquefoil has a five-fingered arrangement of leaves, to which the name "cinquefoil" (five-leaf) alludes. The species is native to high elevations in the American Southwest (Arizona & New Mexico).
Its hybrid cultivar Potentilla thurberi maorubens 'Monarch's Velvet' is a softer & much deeper raspberry-red than for the species, with a velvety maroon heart. The bright blooms are less than one-inch round, on long enough stems to be useful for bouquets.
To get the increased color it was apparently pollinated with a hybridized Himalayan P. atrosanguinea x nepalensis. It's a stable cultivar that grows true from seed, & if started from seed very early in the year, it is apt to bloom its first year.
It is extremely cold-hardy (to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit) & on Puget Sound is evergreen through the winter. Semi-creeping, it spreads rather like its close relative, strawberry vines, into a hardy groundcover. It can clump up to a foot or a foot & a half height, looking rather like an oversized strawberry plant but without the berries.
It requires full sun & very well-draining soil. Although drought-hardy when established, to bloom its best it should have moderate watering during the summer months. In our xeriscape garden where it does not get sufficient watering, it remains a pleasant enough foliage, but it waits until autumn rains to start blooming. With a bit more irrigation it will bloom the entirety of summer & much of autumn.
An excellent filler-plant that holds its own without displacing surrounding perennials, it is also a fine border plant & useful for containers. It's a long-lived plant that can be divided every three years or so, in spring.