Musk storksbill
Erodium moschatum
Family · Geraniaceae · Harmless
The large fleshy storksbill that smells of musk when crushed, common on rich trampled ground. Its fruits coil into a corkscrew and drill the seed into the soil by themselves.
Fields and pasture · Town and roadside · Roadsides and waste ground · Dunes and sand
Also known aswhitestem filaree, musky heron's bill
How to tell it
A rosette of large compound leaves, with nine to thirteen oval toothed leaflets set in pairs along an axis, not in a circle as in cranesbills. A strong musk smell when a leaf is crushed. Lilac-pink flowers in umbels of five to twelve. Fruits with a five-centimetre beak that splits into five and coils into a spiral.
What it is confused with
Common storksbill
Erodium cicutarium
The common one has twice-divided leaves, very fine like hemlock's, and no scent; the musk one has broad merely toothed leaflets and smells of musk when crushed. Neither is dangerous.
Open sheet →What it is for
The young leaves were eaten cooked in Spain and North Africa, and it is prized forage. Traditional use, in the past. The fruit mechanism is worth watching: wet, the beak unwinds; dry, it coils again, and that is how the seed screws itself into the ground.
Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.