Geranium carolinianum|Carolina crane's-bill|Geraniaceae

Geranium carolinianum. By Steven Baskauf. Copyright © 2015 CC-BY-NC-SA. Bioimages - www.cas.vanderbilt.edu:bioimages:frame

Geranium carolinianum is an annual herb, with several stems, freely branched, to 60 cm long, often reddish, densely hairy; from a taproot, roots associated with VA mycorrhizas (Brundrett and Kendrick 1988); stipules to 1 cm long, pointed (Yatskievych 2006).

Leaves alternate, stalk to 15 cm long, blade, round to kidney-shaped, to 7 cm long and wide, deeply divided in 5-9 parts, divisions toothed or lobed.

Flowers pale pink to pale purple, radially symmetrical, to 3 cm wide, petals 5, to 0.4 cm long, 0.2 cm wide, widest near top, notched at tip, sepals 0.5 cm long, tipped with a small beak (mucro), stamens 10, anthers pinkish-yellow, ovary superior, 5-parted, styles united, stigmas 5; inflorescence 4-12 flowered on a long, hairy stalk; blooms and fruits May-Aug.

Fruit dry, each ovary segment (carpel) 1-seeded, hairy, persistent style column linear, to 5 cm long with a short beak, surrounded by persistent sepals to 1 cm long, 0.5 cm wide (Yatskievych 2006).

Wetland status: UPL.

Frequency in NYC: Infrequent.

Origin: Native.

Habitat: Dry, sandy soil, rocky woods, fields.

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Geranium carolinianum Carolina crane’s-bill Geraniaceae GECA; Bx, pb, vc, wv (Yost et al. 1991); Q, j (Stalter and Lamont 2002); K, fl (Z. Wang 2016); R (DeCandido 2001);