SPECIES DESCRIPTION
ERODIUM CICUTARIUM
Family and Genus:- See- GERANIACEAE
Common Names:- Common stork's-bill
Homotypic Synonyms:- Geranium cicutarium
Meaning:- Erodium (Gr) Heron (reference to the shape of fruit, stork's-bill).
Cicutarium (L) Resembling Cicuta.
General description:- A very variable, low to medium, erect, sprawling to
prostrate, hairy annual, often rather foetid.
Stem:-
1) Up to 60(-100) cm.
Leaves:-
1) Up to 15 cm, pinnate, without intercalary leaflets, with variable indumentum;
leaflets pinnatifid to pinnate, but always divided for more than half-way to midrib.
Flowers:-
1) Umbels, with up to 12 flowers.
2) Bracts, brownish.
3) Sepals, 5-7 mm.
4) Petals, 4-11 mm, purplish-pink, lilac or white.
Fruit:-
1) Mericarps, 4-7 mm, with ascending hairs; apical pits eglandular.
2) Beak, 10-70 mm.
Key features:-
1) Most of the leaflets divided more than half-way to the midrib.
2) Apical pits of mericarp eglandular.
3) Bracts, scarious, free or united only at the base.
Habitat:- Sandy coastal habitats, open dry shrubby vegetation, fields and olive
groves, wasteground. 0-1600 m.
Distribution:- Widespread and common throughout the Mediterranean. Widespread
and common on Crete.
Flowering time:- Feb-June.
Photos by:- Steve Lenton
