Manual of the New Zealand Flora.

2. Pelargonium, L'Herit

2. Pelargonium, L'Herit.

Herbs or shrubs. Leaves opposite or rarely alternate, entire toothed lobed or variously divided. Flowers usually in few- or many-flowered umbels on axillary peduncles, irregular. Sepals 5, the uppermost produced into a short spur adnate to the pedicel. Petals 5 or fewer by abortion, the 2 upper different from the others and usually larger. Disc without glands. Stamens 10, hypogynous, connate at the base, 5–7 (rarely fewer) fertile, the remainder without anthers or rudimentary. Ovary 5 - lobed, 5-celled, beaked; beak terminated by 5 short styles, which are longitudinally stigmatose; ovules 2 in each cell. Capsule splitting into 5 carpels with long styles, which roll up elastically; seeds 1 in each carpel.

Species about 180, the whole of which are natives of South Africa except 3 found in North Africa and the Levant, and 2 in Australia and New Zealand.

1. P. australe, Jacq. Eclog. t. 100.—A decumbent or erect simple or branched more or less hairy herb 6–18 in. high; root-stock stout. Leaves on slender petioles 2–6 in. long; blade 1–2 in. diam., ovate-cordate or orbicular-cordate, obscurely 3–5-lobed; lobes finely crenate-serrate, obtuse; stipules broad. Peduncles longer than the leaves; umbels 10–12-flowered. Flowers small, ¼–⅓ in. diam., pink. Sepals ovate, acute, hairy; spur usually very short. Petals from ⅓ to ½ as long again as the sepals, spathulate, notched. Fertile stamens 5, the remainder reduced to membranous scale-like staminodia. Carpels very hairy, their beaks long, lined on the inner face with long soft white hairs.— Benth. Fl. Austral. i. 298; Kirk, Students' Fl. 82. P. australe var. clandestinum, Hook. f. Handb. N.Z. Fl. 37. P. clandestinum, L'Herit ex D.C. Prodr. i. 160; A. Cunn. Precur. n. 595; Raoul, Choix, 47; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 41. North and South Islands, Stewart Island, Chatham Islands: Abundant throughout, ascending to 2000 ft. Kopata. November–February. Also found in Australia and Tasmania, and in Tristan d'Acunha, and probably identical with the South African P. grossularioides, Ait.