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Electronic Flora of South Australia family Fact Sheet

Geraniaceae

Alternative names: Not Applicable

Description:
Herbs or small shrubs with petiolate stipulate leaves, the stipules often interpetiolar; hairs unbranched, with or without a glandular head.

Flowers arranged in cymose umbels, paired or solitary, with peduncles in a spiral sequence; regular or irregular, bisexual; sepals 5, imbricate, more or less mucronate, often slightly enlarged in fruit; petals 5, imbricate; stamens 10, arranged in 2 whorls, a varying number sometimes sterile; anthers with 2 parallel cells; ovary superior, 5-celled and clearly 5-lobed, surmounted by a stout 5-fid style; ovules hemi-anatropous, 2 in each cell.

Fruit a schizocarp, separating into 5 mericarps each containing a single seed and surmounted by an awn which separates from the central column of the style; seed without endosperm; radicle curved downwards (incumbent) over the cotyledons which are convolute around each other.

Distribution:  About 750 species in 7 genera; cosmopolitan.

Biology: No text

Key to Genera:
1. Fertile stamens 10; awn of the fruit glabrous inside
GERANIUM 2.
1. Some stamens sterile; awn of the fruit hairy inside
 
2. Sterile stamens 5, strictly alternating with fertile ones; pedicel without a spur
ERODIUM 1.
2. Sterile stamens varying in number and not strictly alternating with fertile ones; pedicel with a short or long spur adnate to it
PELARGONIUM 3.

Author: Prepared by R. C. Carolin


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