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GERANIUM
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Geranium is the generic name of the cranesbills, or true geraniums, and is also commonly applied to the showy garden and greenhouse plants of the genus Pelargonium. Both genera are members of the geranium family, Geraniaceae.
The cranesbills include more than 300 species distributed throughout the cooler regions of the north temperate zone and the mountains of the Southern Hemisphere. Most are annual or perennial herbs with erect to spreading stems, deeply palmately lobed, opposite leaves, and flowers with five sepals, five overlapping petals alternating with small glands, and ten stamens. The common name cranesbill alludes to its beaklike fruit.
Some cranesbills are commonly cultivated. Among the best known are the blood-red geranium, Geranium sanguineum, and the meadow geranium, G. pratense, both natives of Europe and Asia with large, purple flowers, and the wild cranesbill, G. maculatum, a common woodland species of eastern North America with large, rose purple flowers.
The storksbills, or florists' geranium, genus Pelargonium, include about 280 species of mostly succulent perennial herbs, subshrubs, and vines native to southern Africa. Although similar to Geranium, the flowers of Pelargonium are irregular, with two of the petals differing from the others in size, structure, or markings and lacking glands between them.
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