Mallow-leaved stork's-bill
Erodium malacoides
Family · Geraniaceae · Harmless
The broad-leaved stork's-bill, told from the common one by not having a feathery leaf: here the leaf is entire and lobed, like a small mallow's. It fills southern fields and verges in winter.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside · Dunes and sand
Also known assoft stork's-bill
How to tell it
Oval leaves with shallow lobes and a toothed margin, covered in soft hairs, nothing like the divided leaves of the other stork's-bills. Lilac-pink five-petalled flowers. A long beaked fruit that coils like a corkscrew on drying, as throughout the genus.
What it is confused with
Common stork's-bill
Erodium cicutarium
The leaf decides: feathery and much divided on the common one, entire and mallow-lobed here. The fruit is the same on both.
What it is for
Fodder, and young leaves eaten in some regions. The self-burying fruit is the same mechanism as the common stork's-bill's, and it is worth putting one on the ground and wetting it to watch it happen.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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