£ / . t ” 8 ]
G E R A N I U M molle.
Dove's-foot Crane's-bill.
MONADELPHIA Decandria.
G en. Char. Cal. 5-leaved. Pet. 5, regular. Neflary
5 glands. Fruit beaked, feparating into 5 capfules,
each tipped with along recurved naked awn.
S pec. Char. Stalks two-flowered, alternate, oppofitc
to the leaves. Leaves rounded, lobed, downy.
Capfules puckered, fmooth.
Syn. Geranium molle. Linn. Sp. P i, 955? Sm. FI.
B rit. 734. Hudf. 303. With. 604. Hull. 153.
Relb. 261. Sibtb. 213. Abbot. 150. Curt. Lond.
J~aJc. 2. t. 50.
G. columbinum.- Raii Syn. 359.
T h i s is perhaps our moll common Geranium, being found
in cultivated as well as wade ground, in fields and by way fides,
in all parts of Great Britain, though the fujillum, t. 385, is
equally plentiful in many places, particularly where the foil is
gravelly.
G. molle is annual, flowering from April to the end of fum-
mer. Stems moftly fpreading or procumbent, reddifh, clothed
with foft but longifh hairs. Herb covered with fine foft down,
and fharing the peculiar odour of the Geranium tribe. Leaves
roundifh, lobed, and cut into broadifh, not linear, fegments.
Flower-ftalks folitary, oppofite to the leaves, fpreading very
much. Flowers ere£t, much larger and redder than thofe of
fujillum, with cloven petals. Stamina all perfect. Capfules
tranfverfely rugofe or puckered, by which curious mark the
fpecies is with abfolute certainty diftinguifhed from fujillum,
fyrenaicum, and rotundifolium, with all which it has often been
confounded. The feeds are quite fmooth, not dotted.
Linnaeus certainly did not diftinguifh this from the pyrenai-
cum when he publifhed his Species Plantarum, and we therefore
quote that work in the prefent inftance with doubt..