Flowers are an inch in diameter, of 5 broad, golden petals surrounding 20 or more stamens. Groups of several flowers are borne at the ends of the numerous short branches. Plant is a dense shrub about 3 to 4 feet high with many dark, woody, freely-branching stems. Leaves are pinnate, with usually 5 or 7 narrow linear leaflets. Grows in moist parts of the montane zone, also in the upper foothills and the lower sub-alpine zones. Blooms continuously May to September.

This thornless yellow rose is one of the most widespread and most ornamental shrubs of mountain areas. Individual clumps are rarely fully covered with bloom at any one time, tending rather to bring out a few fresh flowers each day of the season so that all summer long there are buds, fresh blossoms, groups of faded petals, and small, dry, fuzzy seeds (achenes) distributed over the plant. Other species of Potentilla grow also in our mountains. They are much smaller and most of them herb-like, but the resemblance to a yellow single rose, and the absence of thorns are common to them all. We have many wild roses in this same family, of the genus Rosa, that have plenty of thorns and closely resemble the red single roses of the garden.