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.
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.
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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