GERANIACE.E 



A tall, delicate, branching plant of the damp and shady 

 places, remarkable from a distance for its magenta-pink 

 flowers that rise on long stems above the dark green 

 leaves of the thicket. On closer view, one discovers 

 basal leaves, a very light green stem, which bears toward 

 the top, or at least belo^w the flower-cluster, two additional 

 deeply-cut, five-lobed and rough-hairy leaves, which being 

 very sensitive, curl up when the plant is held in the hand. 

 They are spotted with white or brown, a fact that has 

 given rise to the specific title of maculatum. 



From this plant is made a valuable drug. 



GERANIACE^E GERANIUM FAMILY 



Erodium cicutarium, (L.), L'Her. 



Magenta-purple Stork's-bill, 



Heron's bill, 



May- June Wild Musk, 



Pin-clover, 

 Pin Grass, 

 Pin Weed. 



Erodium: Greek for a heron, in allusion "to the long fruit- 

 bearing beak, thought to resemble the bill of that bird." 



Cicutarium: a Latin form, to denote a resemblance to 

 the poison hemlock (Cicuta). 



THE PREFERRED HABITAT: roadsides and gardens in town, 

 sandy soil. 



THE PLANT: erect or somewhat so, six inches to eight 

 inches high; the stem branched, reddish, with flattened 

 loosely-spreading white hairs, rather weak. 



THE LEAVES: dark; alternate; from jointed nodes; pin- 

 nately divided; two inches to four inches long; with long, 

 white hairs on both surfaces; the loWer petioled, the upper 

 sessile. 



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