Geranium

Geranium is the everyday name for Pelargonium, a genus of about 280 species of perennials, succulents and shrubs in the family Geraniaceae. Linnaeus first put them in the genus Geranium, and in 1789 L'Héritier gave them a genus of their own, named from the Greek for stork because the seed head looks like a stork's beak; the same likeness gives the name storksbill. Nine in ten species are native to southern Africa, the rest mostly to East Africa and southern Australia. P. triste reached the botanic garden at Leiden before 1600, and John Tradescant brought it to England in 1631. The five-petalled flowers open in rounded clusters from the centre outwards; garden kinds bloom pink, white, red or salmon above rounded leaves often banded with colour. Scented-leaved kinds are distilled for perfume: in the nineteenth century French perfumers found that rose geranium smelt much like costly attar of rose, and Réunion, then called Bourbon, became the centre of its trade. Geraniums have been grown in European gardens since the seventeenth century, partly to guard the home against evil spirits. Cunningham finds them protective whether planted outdoors or brought in fresh-cut and set in water, says snakes will not go where they grow, and tells of a bed of red geraniums by a witch's cottage charmed to point towards approaching strangers.