Not a large family, herbs, of temperate regions; leaves lobed or
compound, usually with stipules; flowers perfect; sepals and petals
usually five and stamens five or ten; ovary superior; fruit a capsule.
There are many kinds of Geranium; stems with swollen joints; stipules
papery; five glands on the receptacle, alternating with the petals;
stamens ten, five long and five short, filaments united at base; ovary
with a beak formed by the five-cleft style, and becoming a capsule,
which splits open elastically, the style-divisions becoming tails
on the seeds. The Greek name means "crane," in allusion to the long
beak of the capsule, and these plants are often called Crane's-bill.
Cultivated Geraniums are Pelargoniums, from South Africa.
[Sidenote: =Wild Geranium=
_Gerànium incìsum_
=Pink
Spring, summer
West=]
In the Sierra woods, and along Yosemite roadsides, in summer we see
the purplish-pink blossoms and nodding buds of this attractive plant,
resembling the Wild Geranium of the East, growing from thick, perennial
roots, with hairy, branching stems, from one to two feet high. The
hairy leaves, with three or five, toothed lobes, are fragrant like
cultivated geraniums; the flowers, over an inch across, are hairy
inside, the petals veined with magenta. They are occasionally white
and the plants vary in size and hairiness. _G. furcàtum_, of the Grand
Canyon, has magenta petals, which turn back more.
[Sidenote: =Wild Geranium=
_Gerànium Fremóntii_
=Pink
Spring, summer
Southwest, and Utah, Ida., Col., New Mex.=]
This has similar flowers, but is a finer plant, forming large,
thrifty-looking clumps, one or two feet across, of slightly thickish
leaves, dark green on the upper side and paler, with prominent veins,
on the under, the root-leaves with about seven, main divisions, the
stem-leaves three- to five-cleft, each clump of leaves with several
tall, slightly downy flower-stalks springing from it. The calyxes and
buds are downy and the flowers bright pink or rose-purple, delicately
veined. This grows in somewhat moist ground, at the edges of fields and
woody roadsides and on mountain slopes, and is perhaps the handsomest
of its clan.
[Illustration: Geranium incisum.