Agrimonia sp.

Agrimonia spp., known in English as "agrimony" and in French as aigremoine, is a genus of about a dozen herbaceous perennials native to the temperate northern hemisphere, generally with spikes of yellow five-petalled flowers. There are four species found in Ontario, according the USDA's PLANTS database, all of them native:

• Agrimonia gryposepala (tall hairy agrimony, aigremoine à sépales crochus)
• Agrimonia parviflora (harvestlice, aigremoine parviflore)
• Agrimonia pubescens (soft agrimony, aigremoine pubescente)
• Agrimonia striata (roadside agrimony, aigremoine striée)

The agrimonies of Ontario look virtually identical, and Peterson's guide¹ says they can only be distinguished by "technical characters" so I don't feel too bad about not being able to precisely identify this one (though if any of you reading this know which one it is, please let me know!).

The leaves of agrimony are compound, and have distinctive mini-leaflets between some of the larger leaflets.

I photographed this plant in my local ravine.

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1. Peterson, Roger Tory and Margaret McKenny. A field guide to wildflowers: Northeastern and northcentral North America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968.