ERODIUM GRUINUM

Family and Genus:- See- GERANIACEAE

Common Names:- Long-beaked cranesbill

Homotypic Synonyms:- Geranium gruinum.

Meaning:- Erodium (Gr) Heron (reference to the shape of fruit, stork's-bill).

Gruinum (L) Crane-like.

General description:- Herbaceous, annual or biennial. with an evident stem above

ground.

Stems:-

1) 15-50 cm, with patent or deflexed hairs.

Leaves:-

1) Up to 10 cm, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, deeply pinnatifid or pinnatisect,

sometimes with a pair of free leaflets at the base; usually 3-lobed with the central

lobe rounded and much larger than the lateral, crenate-dentate.

Flowers:-

1) Umbels, with 2-6 flowers.

2) Bracts, lanceolate, acute, glabrous, whitish.

3) Sepals, 15-20 mm, usually with few eglandular hairs.

4) Petals, 12-20 mm, lavender-blue or bluish-violet.

Fruit:-

1) Mericarps, c. 14 mm, with numerous ascending, whitish hairs; apical pits deep,

foveolate, with a wide furrow at the base.

2) Beak, 60-110 mm.

Key features:-

1) Lobes, of the leaf diminishing regularly from base to apex.

2) Apical pits of the mericarp smooth or foveolate, not hairy.

Click here for a glossary of terms used.

Habitat:- Olive groves, field margins, roadsides. 0-600 (occasionally to 1400 m.).

Distribution:- E Mediterranean region and SW Asia from Sicily and Cyrenaica to

Iraq and Iran.Sicily and Crete eastwards, including Cyprus. Fairly widespread on

Crete.

Flowering time:- Mar- May.

Photos by:- Steve Lenton