Cranesbill of rights
Amateur Gardening|May 30, 2020
Although cranesbills have a reputation as interlopers, Toby has a special affection for these pretty garden plants
- Toby Buckland
Cranesbill of rights

THERE’S a reason why the common pink and blue blooms of Cranesbill geraniums are so popular. Cranesbills are cuckoos, and if your neighbours have them then it won’t be long before you do, too.

All flowers in the geranium flock, including Alpine erodiums and South African pelargoniums, possess beak-like seed capsules which, when dry, will fling the kernels far and wide. This ability to migrate is obviously very useful, but cranesbills go one further – and just as a cuckoo tricks a meadow pipit into caring for a supersized chick, cranesbills will bamboozle us into believing that they belong.

With the extra garden time on my hands, I’ve been putting most of these wayward but willing flowers to good use (see the panel below) but in my greenhouse there’s a cranesbill that’s a cuckoo on stilts – quite literally.

Last summer, when the seedling from a neon pink Geranium maderense​ arrived in the raised greenhouse bed, I took it under my wing, clearing space on either side and worrying for the little mite when the weather was cold.

この蚘事は Amateur Gardening の May 30, 2020 版に掲茉されおいたす。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トラむアルを開始しお、䜕千もの厳遞されたプレミアム ストヌリヌ、9,000 以䞊の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしおください。

この蚘事は Amateur Gardening の May 30, 2020 版に掲茉されおいたす。

7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トラむアルを開始しお、䜕千もの厳遞されたプレミアム ストヌリヌ、9,000 以䞊の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしおください。