{"id":3072,"date":"2020-05-25T06:10:19","date_gmt":"2020-05-25T14:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3072"},"modified":"2020-05-25T06:10:19","modified_gmt":"2020-05-25T14:10:19","slug":"meadow-cranesbill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/meadow-cranesbill\/","title":{"rendered":"Meadow Cranesbill"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Meadow<\/a>Romantic poet William Wordsworth was fond of rambling through the English countryside, often accompanied by his devoted sister, Dorothy.\u00a0 Waxing sentimental about flowers, plants and nature was almost a requirement for Romantic poets, and Wordsworth did so frequently. \u00a0\u00a0I especially like his description of a meadow flower:<\/p>\n

How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold?<\/em><\/p>\n

Because the lovely little flower is free down to its root,<\/em><\/p>\n

and in that freedom bold.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>I don\u2019t generally think of Wordsworth when I am spreading mulch and digging up crabgrass, but lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about meadow cranesbill or Geranium pratense.\u00a0 It is an extremely likable and useful hardy geranium species, which in turn is part of the large Geraniaceae family.\u00a0 As is often the case with plants, taxonomy creates confusion for the hardy geranium.\u00a0 What most of us call \u201cgeranium\u201d is actually a pelargonium as far as plant taxonomists are concerned.\u00a0 You can clarify the matter by continuing to refer to the big-headed flowering plant in your window box or container array, as a \u201cgeranium\u201d.\u00a0 If you buy a meadow cranesbill or any other type of perennial geranium, call it a \u201chardy geranium\u201d. Most plant people, nursery personnel and gardeners will know what you are talking about.<\/p>\n

If you look at one of the individual flowers in a large pelargonium flowerhead, you will see that it is really a simple thing with just five petals.\u00a0 This five-pedaled configuration is also characteristic of cranesbills, unless they are double-flowered.\u00a0\u00a0 Meadow cranesbill and its hardy geranium relatives generally carry their flowers singly or in very loose clusters at the tops of the stems.\u00a0 When the petals drop, the resulting seed capsules bears a resemblance to a crane\u2019s head<\/p>\n

and bill, giving rise to the common and Latin genus names.\u00a0 When those capsules ripen and burst open, they can spit seeds several feet from the parent plant, spreading the geranium wealth very neatly.<\/p>\n

What makes meadow cranesbill worthy of \u00a0Wordsworthian inspiration?\u00a0 Beautiful flowers and foliage, for starters.\u00a0 The flowers, which rise above the leaves and generally bloom most abundantly in mid to late spring.\u00a0 They appear most often in shades of blue-purple , but advances in breeding have resulted in flowers that may appear in shades of white, pink or pink-purple.\u00a0 Some varieties also feature contrasting veins that stripe each petal.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\"Meadow<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>Foliage matters a lot to gardeners who crave plants that pull their aesthetic weight throughout the gardening season.\u00a0 Meadow cranesbills do not disappoint in that department.\u00a0 The leaves are almost fern like, divided into deeply dissected lobes.\u00a0 The plants have a spreading, somewhat mounding habit, so those lovely leaves are on full display on specimens that can grow two to three feet tall and wide.\u00a0 Most often the foliage is medium to dark green, but some varieties feature chocolate brown to deep purple-black leaves.<\/p>\n

Meadow cranesbills did not start out in North American meadows.\u00a0 The ancestors of today\u2019s plants came from\u00a0 areas of\u00a0 northern Europe and Asia.\u00a0 Once they arrived here, they enchanted gardeners and demonstrated their hardiness and adaptability by escaping from gardens and naturalizing in some places.\u00a0 Despite those tendencies, they are not considered invasive.<\/p>\n

The Geraniaceae specialist nursery carries no less than 23 varieties of Geranium pretense.\u00a0\u00a0 I am very partial to the ones with dark leaves, like \u2018Midnight Reiter\u2019, which features dark maroon foliage and flowers that approach true blue with only a bit of purple.\u00a0 Another beauty, \u2018Mrs. Kendall Clark\u2019 journeyed here from England bearing blue gray flowers and dark green leaves.\u00a0 Lovers of double-flowered varieties, like me, can rejoice in\u00a0 \u2018Plenum Violaceum\u2019, with flowers that resemble blue-purple rosebuds;\u00a0 and \u2018Double Jewel\u2019 , with white blooms veined in purple.\u00a0 I find that the white, single-flowered varieties like Geranium pratense f. albiflorum or \u2018Galactic\u2019 lighten things up in the spring garden, blooming along with the first irises and the last forget-me-nots.<\/p>\n

Meadow cranesbills are good garden companions, getting along in the front or middle of beds and borders.\u00a0 They flourish in sun or light shade and prefer consistent moisture, especially as\u00a0 new plants establish themselves.\u00a0 Butterflies like cranesbills, but varmints generally don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Every garden center seems to carry at least some hardy geraniums and\u00a0 many of them are quite beautiful.\u00a0 Meadow cranesbill is a little harder to find.\u00a0 For the best selection go to California-based online vendor Geraniaceae, (415) 461-4168; www.geraniaceae.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Romantic poet William Wordsworth was fond of rambling through the English countryside, often accompanied by his devoted sister, Dorothy.\u00a0 Waxing sentimental about flowers, plants and nature was almost a requirement for Romantic poets, and Wordsworth did so frequently. \u00a0\u00a0I especially like his description of a meadow flower: How does the Meadow flower its bloom unfold? … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3],"tags":[1107,124,174,2306,2307,1181],"class_list":["post-3072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-geranium-family","tag-geranium-pratense","tag-hardy-geraniums","tag-meadown-cranesbill","tag-meadown-geranium","tag-spring-flowering-plants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3075,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3072\/revisions\/3075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}