BOTANY WITH BASICS OF HYDROBOTANY (AQUATIC PLANTS OF UKRAINE) - B.E. Yakubenko - 2011

X. SEED PLANTS

Geranium Family (Geraniacaea)

Herbs, less commonly shrubs or subshrubs, with alternate or sometimes opposite leaves bearing stipules. Flowers are pentamerous, cyclic, actinomorphic or zygomorphic, with ten stamens, occasionally five or 15; pistil single, consisting of five fused carpels, Ovary superior, five-locular; fruit is a capsule. Upon maturation, the carpels separate from the central Column, curving sharply upward and forcibly scattering the seeds.

Comprises 5-11 genera and 600-750 species, distributed primarily in the temperate zone. In Ukraine, it is represented by three genera and 32 species.

Marsh crane's-bill (Geranium palustre L.). Perennial plant, 40-70 cm tall; uliginosophyte, entomophile, autochore, balist. Rhizome thick, oblique. Stem erect or ascending, branched, with long internodes, swollen nodes, and short-pubescent with rigid, spreading hairs. Lower leaves long-petiolate (petioles up to 20 cm long), pentagonal in outline, 4-7 cm long, 7-10 cm wide, palmatipartite, with broadly rhombic lobes that are toothed in the upper third. Flowers in July-September. Reproduces vegetatively and by seeds.

Flowers solitary, actinomorphic, bisexual. Pedicels long (6-10 cm). Perianth double, pentamerous; petals obovate, up to 15 mm long, twice as long as the sepals, violet-red, Ciliate at the base. Floral formula: *K5C5A10G(5). Fruits with an elongated, glabrous beak, brown, sparsely pubescent.

Grows in bogs and waterlogged meadows throughout Ukraine.



Last update: 07/08/2026

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