GERANIACE^. 195 



Stem 1 to 3 feet liigh. Root leaves 3 to 5 inches across, with 

 petioles 6 to 12 inches long. Peduncles rather long, exceeding 

 the pedicels, not bent down after flowering as in all tlie preceding, 

 and most of the following species. Flowers 1 inch across, bluisli- 

 purple, with the veins not conspicuously different, except in a 

 white-flowered variety with red veins which was found by myself 

 in Castle Campbell Wood, Clackmannanshire. Sepals elliptical, 

 obtuse and emarginate at the apex, awned, with broad membranous 

 margins clothed with gland-tipped liairs. Petals spreading so that 

 the corolla is slightly concave. Fruit, including the beak, 1 to IJ 

 inch long, the carpels with adpressed hairs but no wrinkles. 

 Seeds oblong-ovoid, dark olive, with faint longitudinal raised lines 

 close to each other and connected by transverse ones. Whole 

 plant light green, witli the leaves soft and flaccid, sparingly pubes- 

 cent, with short reflexed hairs on the lower part of the stem, 

 and shorter and closer gland-tipped ones on the upper part of the 

 stem, peduncles and pedicels, and still shorter adpressed hairs on 

 the leaves. 



IVood Crane's Bill. 



French, Geranium des Bois. German, Wald Kranidischnabel. 



-^ SPECIES v.— G ERANIUM PRATENSE. Linn. 



Plate CCXCVII. 

 Eeic/i. Ic. Fl. Germ, et Helv. Vol. V. Geran. Tab. CXCIII. Fig. 4883. 



Rbotstoek horizontal, premorse, rather short, very thick, scaly, 

 with very short branches. Stems erect, generally simple below, 

 dichotomously branched above, with very short hairs. Radical 

 leaves on long stalks, angulated-roundish, very deeply 7- to 9-cleft, 

 wdth segments narrowly rhomboidal, not contiguous, acute, irre- 

 gularly and deeply pinnatifid, with the ultimate lobes strap-shaped, 

 acute, entire. Stem leaves with narrower segments ; the uppermost 

 leaves opposite, sessile, 5- or 3-lobed, with the lobes much smaller. 

 Flowers numerous, in a terminal dichotomous cyme. Peduncles 

 in the forks of the stem and terminal, 2-tlo\vered, deflexed after 

 flowering. Petals much longer than the sepals, broadly obovate, 

 rounded at the apex. Filaments with an ovate-triangular base, 

 suddenly contracted below the middle into a subulate apical portion. 

 Carpels hairy, smooth. Seeds closely covered with minute pits. 



Meadows and waste places, especially by the sides of rivers. 

 Rather common, and generally distributed except in the extreme 

 North of Scotland. 



England, Scotland, Ireland. Perennial. Summer and Autumn. 



