# Cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans)

**Pentafillo**

**Known today as.** *Potentilla reptans*.

Kind: Plant

## What did Canale use it for?

In an infusion of bean-trefoil bark with rue and peony (ch. 5).

## What does modern science say?

Astringent, not emetic. Its five-fingered leaf gave it a long career in charms, especially love divinations.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **tannins**: ellagitannins, 5–10 per cent
- **agrimoniin**: 
- **quercetin**: 

**Mechanism.** *Potentilla reptans* and its kin are astringents like tormentil, their stronger cousin: protein precipitation in the gut and on the skin.

**Dose.** Safe at ordinary doses.

**Standing.** Neither creeping cinquefoil nor silverweed has an EMA monograph; tormentil, their stronger cousin, has one (2011), and both are used the same way in the German tradition.

## What lore surrounds it?

“In former days, Cinquefoil (Potentilla) much prevailed as an heraldic device; the number of the leaves answering to the five senses of man. The right to bear Cinquefoil was considered an honourable distinction to him who had worthily conquered his affections and mastered his senses.” In wet weather, Folkard adds, the leaves “contract and bend over the flower, forming, as it were, a little tent to cover it,” and the plant “was formerly believed to be a cure for agues; four branches being prescribed for a quartan, three for a tertian, and one for a quotidian.”

Thiselton-Dyer adds that “for ague, cinquefoil and yarrow were recommended.”

Grieve records Dioscorides' rule that “one leaf cured a quotidian, three a tertian, and four a quarten ague,” and the darker use: “In an old recipe called ‘Witches' Ointment’ the juice of Five-leaf Grass, smallage and wolfsbane is mixed with the fat of children dug up from their graves and added to fine wheat flour.”

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** “There is no one to whom quinquefolium is unknown, being recommended by a sort of strawberry which it bears”: the Greeks call it pentapetes, pentaphyllon, and chamaezelon; its root is red when taken up and dries black and angular; it puts forth and withers with the leaves of the vine, and “this plant also is employed in the purification of houses”; its juice is given to those who have taken poison, and it serves for the bite of the phalangium and, bound to the head with iberis, for defluxions of the eyes.

## Sources

- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 25.62, 25.72, 25.79, 25.91, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Cinquefoil.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Thiselton-Dyer, T. F. (1889). *The Folk-lore of Plants*. Project Gutenberg #10118.
- Grieve, M. (1931). *A Modern Herbal*, “Five-Leaf Grass.” botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/f/fivele20.html
- Tomczyk, M., and Latté, K. P. (2009). “*Potentilla*: a review of its phytochemical and pharmacological profile.” *Journal of Ethnopharmacology* 122.

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*Cinquefoil.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/cinquefoil

Historical description, not medical advice.