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Geranium phaeum L., Dusky Crane's-bill

Account Summary

Introduction, neophyte, an occasional garden escape.

1900; West, W.; near the Silver Swallow Inn, Enniskillen.

April to September.

A tall or medium-sized, clump-forming, sub-alpine perennial of damp meadows and wood margins from the mountains of C & S Europe, the native range of the species stretches from the Pyrenees across through the Alps and continues eastwards to reach upland areas of W Russia and its satellite states. It is often naturalised outside this range, especially northwards (Yeo 1985, p. 165). G. phaeum has been considered a very useful and easy garden subject for shade or semi-shade in Britain ever since it was introduced sometime in the 17th century or even earlier (Yeo 1985, p. 12). It is appreciated for its early flowering (April onwards), in a range of mainly dark or dusky petal colours, some of which change hue as they age (Yeo 1985, pp. 163-6).

Possessing a stout rootstock and displaying a wintergreen leaf habit, the plant can readily establish itself from dumped garden rubbish or as an escape from cultivation and it quite often becomes well naturalised and persistent. In Britain, it was first recorded in the wild as long ago as 1724 and is frequently recorded in suitably moist, shaded sites, chiefly close to habitation on roadside grasslands and hedgerows, churchyards, railway embankments and woodland margins (Clement & Foster 1994; S.J. Leach, in: Preston et al. 2002).

The thinly scattered Fermanagh locations are likewise almost exclusively on roadsides near habitation, or they are obvious relicts of cultivation near ruined cottages, mainly in the lowland east of the county. There are local records from a total of 14 Fermanagh tetrads, nine of them with post-1975 dates. One site N of Tattykeeran Td is rather different from the remainder in being very much more remote. However, since the large clumps involved include plants of several distinct colour forms, it is highly likely they all originate from fly-tipped excess garden material.

G. phaeum is widely scattered throughout Britain from Land's End to Inverness but, in Ireland, it is very much more frequently recorded in the north of the island than in the RoI. However, in this respect it may be important to realise that Reynolds (2002) lists 16 Irish VCs from which at least one record of G. phaeum has been made, five of which in the RoI are not represented in the New Atlas map (ie VCs East Cork (H5), Meath (H22), Co Sligo (H28), Co Cavan (H30) & East Donegal (H34)).

The very dark, sometimes nearly black flowered form of G. phaeum has been particularly fashionable in recent years, as have near-black varieties of other garden genera and one of the English common names for G. phaeum is 'Black Widow' (Griffiths 1994). The Latin specific epithet 'phaeum' is a Latinised Greek word meaning 'dusky', 'dun' or 'dusky brown' (Gilbert-Carter 1964).

Fermanagh Occurence

Threats

None.