Stephan ex Willd.
Description
Geranium collinum (Stephan ex Willd.) is a perennial cranesbill of wide continental distribution, ranging from eastern Europe and the Caucasus through Russia, Turkey, Iran and Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan) into Afghanistan, Pakistan, the western Himalaya and western China and Mongolia. The roughly 3,200 GBIF records trace a steppe-and-mountain belt across temperate Asia. It is characteristic of moist alpine meadows, damp grassland, streamsides and open subalpine slopes, typically between 2,500 and 4,000 m, as shown by the West Nepal collections from Loccu at 3,400 m and Kalmura at 3,800 m, both in June at the height of the monsoon-flush flowering season.
The plant grows from a stout, woody, branched rootstock and produces ascending to decumbent, much-branched stems clothed in spreading, often retrorse hairs. The leaves are long-petiolate and palmately divided into five to seven deeply incised, oblong-cuneate lobes, the upper cauline leaves becoming shortly stalked and smaller. The flowers are borne in lax, paired cymes; the five petals are pale pink to lilac-purple, obovate and slightly notched, conspicuously veined with darker lines. The fruit is the characteristic geraniaceous schizocarp with a long beak (rostrum), splitting at maturity into five awned mericarps that disperse the seeds by an explosive ballistic mechanism.
Geranium collinum belongs to a taxonomically complex group of pink-flowered perennial cranesbills and is somewhat variable in leaf dissection and indumentum across its vast range, having given rise to numerous infraspecific names. Its presence in alpine pastures makes it a component of high-altitude grazing communities, and the tannin-rich rootstock has been used in folk medicine. The species is widespread and not of conservation concern.
Author: Stephan ex Willd. · Sources: POWO (Kew), Flora of Pakistan, GBIF, Flora of China Vol. 11, Yeo: Hardy Geraniums (2002)