 |
Geranium psilostemon |
 |
| Common name |
cranesbill |
| Family |
geraniaceae |
| Life cycle |
perennial (Z5-8) |
| Flowers |
purple/black (June) |
| Size |
4' |
| Light |
sun-part shade |
| Cultural notes |
ordinary garden soil |
From seed  |
Self-seeds sporadically in our garden. Not easy to germinate - probably requires a lengthy cold stage.
detailed seed-starting info below
|
| Seed ripens | extended period, starting early July |
The tallest of the cranesbills in our garden, growing to a large, billowing mound, with lots of black-eyed purple flowers late spring into summer. It happily accepts its position in full sun and occasional drought, which has earned our original plant and several of its offspring prominent positions in our front lane.
|
| | Close-up of leaf shape: large, deeply cut leaves |
|
We left this plant behind in our Pennsylvania garden (and wish it well); we don't grow it in Houston. Read about all the cranesbills in our garden on my geraniums page One or more images of this plant are included in my stock photo catalog About my plant portraits
PlantLinks to other web pages about Geranium psilostemon
Visitors to this page have left the following comments| jennifer | Jun 24, 2010 | Wow this is an awesome page. I've had Wargrave pink for years and always just called it the "pink one" until today when I found your site. A friend gave me what appears to be a psilostemon that i was able to identify by the great leaf photos! next I will identify my purple one! Thank you so much! |
| Margaret | May 20, 2016 | Hi - we did love these plants, we have Geranium Psilostemon, which unfortunately is taking over our small south facing garden in Scotland. Tried pulling and digging it out but it persists.
Any advice to control this?
That really surprises me – G. psilostemon doesn't spread by running roots, and has been a polite reseeder for me, quite easy to pull up where it isn't desired. I guess it really likes your garden! |
| Pam | May 04, 2022 | Please add climate Zones to your descriptions, Otherwise great!
I added my best estimate of hardiness zones to the profile. You can find more sites that have this kind of information using the plantlinks link on this page. As you'll see, different sources don't always agree on hardiness. |
- Seed from '02 garden. Baggy 35F (12w) - 70F (no G)
- Seed from '04 garden. Baggy 35F (13w; 8%G, 5w) - 70F (8%G, 3d)
- Seed from '09 garden. Baggy 35F (52%G, 4-9w)
- Seed from '09 garden. Baggy 35F (93%G, 3-12w)
Cold germination appears to be the way to go.
I welcome comments about my web pages; feel free to use the form below to
leave feedback about this particular page. For the benefit of other visitors
to these pages, I will list any relevant comments you leave, and if
appropriate, I will update my page to correct mis-information. Faced with an
ever-increasing onslaught of spam, I'm forced to discard any comments including
html markups. Please submit your comment as plain text. If you have a
comment about the website as a whole, please leave it in my
guestbook. If you
have a question that needs a personal response, please
e-mail me.
|
