GERANIUM MACULATUM. 

 SPOTTED CRANES-BILL. 



NATURAL ORDER, GERANIACE/E. 



Geranium maculatum, LiniiDSus. — Stem erect, dichotomous above; leaves three to five parted ; 

 petals entire, twice as long as the calyx. Stem twelve to eighteen inches high, hairy. 

 Leaves two to three inches long, marked with pale blotches, radical leaves on petioles 

 three to six or eight inches in length ; stem leaves on shorter petioles, the uppermost subses- 

 sile. Flowers purple, large, subcorymbose. (Darlington's Flora Cestnca. See also 

 Gray's Flora of the Northern United States, Chapman's Flora of the Southern United 

 States, and Wood's Class-Book of Botany.) 



O "general view of the flora of the United States" would 



o 



be perfect without one of the Geraniacese, so we give 

 this now as the prettiest American representative of this very 

 interesting family of plants. We have not many in America to 

 choose from, for the genus Geranium belongs chiefly to the 

 eastern hemisphere, where they number a hundred species, while 

 there are only about half a dozen within all the wide boundaries 

 of the United States. Some of the species of the old world were 

 well known to the early Greeks. The name Geranium, though 

 adopted from Pliny, the ancient Latin author, is really the Greek 

 Geranion. Geranos is the Greek word for crane, a well-known, 

 long necked bird; and as there is some resemblance in the half 

 mature seed-vessels which in some of the species curve down- 

 wards from the summit of their slender stems, it is thought prob- 

 able that the name was given to the plant by the Greeks from 

 this resemblance ; and from the name as associated with these 

 drooping fruited kinds we have the common name of " crane's- 

 bill." Many of the names of plants in use by the ancients have 

 been applied by modern botanists to genera having only a distant 



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