314 
PARK AND CC/nCTPHY. 
Garden Plants, — Their Geography. X. 
GERANIALES. 
THE GERANIUM, CITRUS. AND CEDRELA ALLIANCE. 
This is an extensive alliance of 35 tribes, 309 
genera, and 3834 species, to which the unexplored 
regions of the tropics may be expected to add 
others. The tribes vary in aspect considerably 
and have a very wide distribution. Some of the 
genera, such as Geranium are almost ubiquitous, 
being scattered over all temperate regions and 
most of the tropical mountains elevated sufficient- 
ly to be temperate in climate. Pelargoniums are 
more numerous as to species perhaps, but are chief- 
ly confined to South Africa and adjacent regions, 
and Australia. A great many useful plants are 
embraced within the group such as flax, the stimu- 
lant “coca” leaves of South America, the lignum- 
vitm wood, the oranges and other fine fruits, the 
mahogany, toon, and other fine timbers, and sever- 
al herbs and esculent tubers, these latter but little 
used in northern regions however. A variety of 
gums and wood oils are also produced by a num- 
ber of species, while several astringents are of some 
repute in medicine 
As ornamental garden plants they are in great 
demand, and florists have multiplied the varieties of 
some species indefinitely. 
Limiin, “flax,” has 100 species widely distribut- 
ed over the world. 
Several have pretty 
blue, yellow, white 
or magenta flov/ers, 
mostly su m m e r 
flowering and in 
perennial and an- 
nual kinds. 
Reinwardtia is in 
LINUM GRANDIFLORUM RUBRUM. . 
2 species natives of 
the mountains of India. One of them attains to some 
size in its own home, scrambling into the bushes to 
10 or 12 feet high. 
Geranium, “cranes bill,“ “herb Robert,” &c., 
has 1 10 species, of wide distribution as previously 
remarked. They are perennial or annual herbs, 
not shrubs, and have regular spurless 10 stamened 
flowers, often purple or nearly blue. There are 
about a dozen Geraniums found wild in the United 
States. 
Pelargoniums belong to a different tribe, and 
have 200 species with enormously more names. 
They are African for the most part, mostly South 
African. Many are shrubby, and have irregular 
spurred 5 stamened flowers, never blue or blueish. 
It does not seem to signify who confounds these 
two genera, or in what language, it is confusion; 
an element that botanists have shown themselves 
abundantly able to 
perpetuate without aid 
from gardeners or any- 
body. There are an- 
nual, perennial, her- 
baceous, and shrubby 
Pelargoniums aplenty. 
They are enormously 
popular garden plants, 
and hybrids of the 
shrubby kinds in par- 
ticular are countless. 
The genus is so exten- 
sive and various that Bentham and Hooker divide it 
into a number of sections. P. grandiflorum isreckon- 
PELARGONIUM — SHOW TYPE. 
ed the parent of the show and fancy strains, now com- 
ing into fashion again, but never quite out of it, 
and proably P. tri- 
color lept its aid 
also. P. zonale 
and P. inquinans 
are deemed the 
parents of the scar- 
let, pink and white 
bedders with their 
variegated forms. 
P. peltatum is sup- 
posed to be the 
parent of the Ivy- 
leaf forms. In gar- 
dens these have 
been recently hy- 
bridized and hand- 
somely improved. 
In fact all doubles 
are acquisitions of 
