Geranium maculatum
| Geranium maculatum | |
|---|---|
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| (unranked): | Angiosperms |
| (unranked): | Eudicots |
| (unranked): | Rosids |
| Order: | Geraniales |
| Family: | Geraniaceae |
| Genus: | Geranium |
| Species: | G. maculatum |
| Binomial name | |
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Geranium maculatum L. |
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Geranium maculatum (wild geranium, spotted geranium, or wood geranium) is a perennial plant native to woodland in eastern North America, from southern Manitoba and southwestern Quebec south to Alabama and Georgia and west to Oklahoma and South Dakota.
It is known as spotted cranesbill or wild cranesbill in Europe, but the wood cranesbill is another plant, the related G. sylvatium (a European native called "woodland geranium" in North America). Colloquial names are alum root, alum bloom and old maid's nightcap.
It grows in dry to moist woods and is normally abundant when found.
It is a perennial herbaceous plant growing to 60 cm (2 ft) tall, producing upright usually unbranched stems and flowers in spring to early summer. The leaves are palmately lobed with five or seven deeply cut lobes, 10–12.5 cm (4–5 in) broad, with a petiole up to 30 cm (12 in) long arising from the . They are deeply parted into three or five divisions, each of which is again cleft and toothed.
The flowers are 2.5–4 cm (1.0–1.6 in) in diameter, with five rose-purple, pale or violet-purple (rarely white) petals and ten stamens. In the Northern Hemisphere, they appear from April to June (precise dates depend on the latitude). They are grouped in loose corymbs or umbels of two to five at the top of the flower stems.
The fruit capsule, which springs open when ripe, consists of five cells each containing one seed joined to a long beak-like column 2–3 cm (0.8–1.2 in) long (resembling a crane's bill) produced from the center of the old flower.
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Wikipedia