Crane'sbill Catapults

Meadow Crane'sbill catapults discharged
Meadow Crane'sbill catapults primed and ready to go

The meadow crane’sbill Geranium pratense in my garden (see http://cabinetofcuriosities-greenfingers.blogspot.com/search/label/Geranium%20pratense) has now run to seed and is using its natural catapult mechanism to hurl seeds around the flower borders. There are five seeds, each inside an ovary that splits open, arranged around the bottom of the central ‘beak’ of the fruit and connected to it by long strips of dead cells that become tensioned like springs as they dry out. When the tension reaches a critical point each ovary breaks free and is flicked upwards violently by its ‘spring’, hurling out the seed – just like a rock launched from a Roman siege catapult. It’s a highly effective mechanism – from one original plant, I now have meadow crane’sbills all over the garden. The seeds of this species have a hard, water-repellent outer coat and are slow to germinate, so if you want to raise it from seed gently abrade the seed coat with a piece of sandpaper, then it will germinate very quickly.

Crane’sbills: five that are in flower now

Five crane’sbill species are flowering in our wild flower garden at the moment. Herb Robert Geranium robertianum (bottom) seeds itself everywhere and is a great in-filler between other plants. The first of the larger-flowered crane’sbill species to flower is dusky crane’sbill Geranium phaeum, whose rather more sombre but graceful flowers are the first of the larger flowered species to come into bloom. Strictly speaking it’s not a native wild flower, originating from the mountains of central and southern Europe, but it’s quite widely naturalised in the countryside. Next up is wood crane’sbill Geranium sylvaticum, which flowers in hedgerows and woodland edges from mid-spring onwards. It’s followed in early summer by the delightful meadow crane’sbill Geranium pratense, a key component of northern Pennine haymeadows, whose flowers are bluer and leaves more highly dissected than those of wood crane’sbill. Finally, at the top, there’s bloody crane’sbill Geranium sanguineum, a characteristic species of the Northumberland coastline, where it produces fabulous displays in the grassland on the edge of sand dunes. All are united in the genus Geranium by the shape of their fruit, which elongates to resemble a crane’s beak as it ripens; the Latinise generic name for all of them,Geranium, comes from the Greek geranos, a crane.