The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Petasites frigidus
Also called Sweet Coltsfoot, Arctic Butterbur, Northern Sweet Coltsfoot
Arctic sweet coltsfoot is a hardy perennial of the daisy family that grows from an underground rootstock, producing flower stems in early spring and large leaves through summer. It thrives in cool, moist, shaded ground such as stream banks.
Petasites frigidus, the Arctic sweet coltsfoot or Arctic butterbur, is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae. It is native to Arctic to cool temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere in northern Europe, northern Asia and northern North America.
It is a herbaceous perennial plant producing flowering stems in early spring, and large leaves through the summer. The upright flowering stems are 10–20 cm (4–8 in) tall, and bear only 5–12 inflorescences, yellowish-white to pink in colour. The leaves are rounded, 15–20 cm (6–8 in) broad, with a deeply cleft base and shallowly lobed margin, and rise directly from the underground rootstock. The underside of the leaves is covered with matted, woolly fuzz. It grows in moist shaded ground, preferring stream banks and seeping ground of cut-banks.
The leaf stalks and flower stems (with flowers) are edible, and can be used as a vegetable dish. A salt-substitute can also be made by drying and then burning the leaves. This black, powdery substance will provide a salty taste. However, given the high likelihood of the presence of toxic unsaturated, diester pyrrolizidine alkaloids in this species, consumption should be very limited.
White Butterbur · Common Butterbur · Japanese sweet coltsfoot · Winter Heliotrope · Petasites spurius · Butterbur
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Petasites frigidus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
