SPECIES DESCRIPTION
ERODIUM CHIUM
Family and Genus:- See- GERANIACEAE
Common Names:- Mediterranean storksbill
Homotypic Synonyms:- Erodium malacoides subsp. chium, Erodium
malacoides var. chium, Geranium chium.
Meaning:- Erodium (Gr) Heron (reference to the shape of fruit, stork's-bill).
Chium (L) From the Greek island of Chios
General description:- Perennial.
Stems:-
1) 5-50 cm, with deflexed hairs at least near the base.
Leaves:-
1) Lower, long-petiolate; blade ovate, pinnatifid, with few rounded, bluntly dentate
lobes.
2) Upper, smaller, subsessile, acutely dentate.
Flowers:-
1) Umbels, with 3-8 flowers.
2) Bracts, 3-5 or more, ovate, acute, brown.
3) Sepals, 5-7 mm.
4) Petals, 5-9 mm slightly longer than the sepals rounded at the apex, purplish
purplish.
Fruit:-
1) Mericarps, less than 5 mm. strigose, with a rounded, rather deep, usually
glabrous and glossy pit at the top, covered with minute glands, without a furrow
at the base.
2) Beak, 3-4 cm.
Key features:-
1) Plant, normally caulescent.
2) Beak, of fruit not more than 40 mm.
3) Sepals, 5-7 mm.
4) Mericarps, less than 5 mm.
5) Apical pits of the mericarp without a furrow at the base.
6) Leaves lobed.
Habitat:- Dry open shrubby vegetation, olive groves, vineyards and ruderal habitats.
0-500 m.
Distribution:- In Greece almost confined to the Aegean area. - Scattered in the
Mediterranean region, eastwards to the East Aegean Islands and perhaps further.
Fairly rare on Crete, known from only a few scattered locations in the central region.
Flowering time:- End Mar- May, occasionally later.
Photos by:- Courtesy of Wiki-Commons
