GERANIACEAE

LXXXIII. GERANIACEAE View in CoL 1

Herbs, or rarely small shrubs with soft stems. Leaves stipulate, usually lobed or divided, and sometimes more or less compound. Flowers in cymes, umbels or spikes, 5-merous, actinomorphic or somewhat zygomorphic. Sepals 5, free; petals 5, free; stamens obdiplostemonous in two whorls of 5, some of them sometimes reduced to staminodes. Ovary superior, of 5 united carpels, separating in fruit into 5 1 -seeded mericarps; styles united in flower, sometimes separating in fruit.

Literature: R. Knuth in Engler, Pflanzenreich 53 (IV, 129): 1 -640 (1912).

Several species and hybrids of Pelargonium from S. Africa are widely cultivated for ornament or ( P. radula and hybrids) for essential oils. They are reported as occasional escapes, or as persisting among native vegetation in abandoned fields, and are sometimes planted in roadside hedges, but none appears to be truly naturalized. The plants likely to be encountered include P. peltatum (L.) L’Hér. in Aiton, Hort. Kew. 2: 427 (1789), with fleshy, peltate, 5-lobed leaves and procumbent stems; P. radula (Cav.) L’Hér. in Aiton, op. cit. 423 (1789) and its hybrids, with fragrant, deeply pinnatisect leaves and with a dark patch on the upper 2 petals; and P. xhybridum (L.) L’Hér. in Aiton, op. cit.

424 (1789) ( P. inquinans x zonale}, with bright scarlet flowers and leaves usually marked with a dark ring.

1 Flowers in spikes; stigmas united, capitate 3. Biebersteinia

1 Flowers in cymes or umbels; stigmas free, linear

2 Leavespalmately(rarelyternately)dividedorlobed; beakof mericarp straight or curved in a simple arc, sometimes absent 1. Geranium

2 Leaves pinnately divided or lobed; beak of mericarp spirally twisted at maturity 2. Erodium