Dove's-foot cranesbill
Geranium molle
Family · Geraniaceae · Harmless
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The commonest wild geranium of lawns and verges, velvet-soft to the touch, with small pink flowers with notched petals. It is the plant that fills a neglected garden in March.
Fields and pasture · Town and roadside · Roadsides and waste ground · Uplands
Also known asdovesfoot geranium, soft cranesbill
How to tell it
Almost round leaves divided into five to nine shallow lobes, covered in long soft hairs. Small lilac-pink flowers, the five petals clearly notched at the tip, like a heart. A short beaked fruit, hairless and wrinkled.
What it is confused with
Round-leaved cranesbill
Geranium rotundifolium
Very similar. Look at the petals: heart-notched on dove's-foot, entire and rounded on the round-leaved one. Both harmless and the mistake costs nothing.
Open sheet →What it is for
No relevant use. It counts as a doorway into learning the wild geraniums, which are many and are almost always separated by leaf shape and fruit.