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cranes bill flower
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DOVE'S-FOOT CRANE'S-BILL
Geranium molle
Family GERANIACEAE
This neat member of a charming family is a familiar plant of the wayside and pasture.
It is an annual, and from a tough rootstock forms a tuft , more or less hairy. The stems are weak and spreading, and swollen at the joints, very short when first flowering.
The leaf-stalks are long, and the numerous radieal leaves, though their general outline is kidney-shaped, are deeply eut into about seven lobes, which are in tum lobed and toothed. The upper leaves are fewer and smaller.
The rosy flowers are borne in pairs, on a short peduncle, the sepals are scarcely pointed, and the broader end of the petal is notched in the middle, and the narrow lower portion is fringed with hairs.
The carpels, or divisions of the seed-vessel, are keeled but not wrinkled, and the seeds are pitted.
The flowering period is from May to September.
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It is an annual plant with erect, slender stems extending to about one and a half feet high. Its narrow lance-shaped leaves are arranged alternately and at a flower bill cranes distance from eachother. The flowers are large, and purplish-blue in colour, borne in a loose terminal corymb. Five is the number dominating the structure of the flower; sepals, petals cranes flower bill, stamens, glands, ovary (five cells), styles - all fives. The flowering period is in June and July.
Individually the flowers are inconspicuous. The calyx is irregular, and divided into four to seven narrow segments; there is a bill flower cranes similar number of unequal greenish-yellow petals, each deeply cleft into two lobes, and a multitude of stamens. The stigmas are lobes at the mouth of the open ovary. The bill cranes flower flowers are honeyed, though scentless. The oblong seed capsule is green and opens at the top long before maturity, each containing several seeds.
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