Sandra's Garden: Vancouver's Centennial

Species name: Pelargonium x hortorum 'Vancouver Centennial'

Common name: 'Vancouver Centennial' geranium

Location: Sandra's garden

Geraniums themselves (not real geraniums, of course, but Pelargonium plants) are incredibly popular garden plants around the world. I've blogged about a red-flowering cultivar already, and you can read all about it HERE. This cultivar, however, is a special type of hybrid that has then been selectively bred for leaf shape and leaf colour. The first time I had ever seen this specific cultivar was in Sandra's garden. Since then, I've seen it literally everywhere I've looked. Isn't it funny how things like that happen? Someone brings your attention to something, then you start noticing it a lot more often.

Contrary to what you might think, this cultivar was not created in Canada (despite being named after Canada's famous Vancouver, not one of the United States' many, many Vancouvers) but in the United States. Rumor has it that it was named in honor of Vancouver's 100th birthday, which would have officially been in 1986 (the city was officially incorporated using the name "Vancouver" in 1886; prior to that it was Gastown which was settled in 1867 and grew to become the town of Granville until the renaming in 1886). I'm not sure if this is true or not, but a nice story. The leaf shape was selected by growers to minimize the "frilling" that can be seen in most geranium cultivars, and the leaf colour was selected based on the maximum amount of red that could be bred into the plant until it was no longer healthy and couldn't survive. Leaves are green for a reason; the pigments in the leaves responsible for photosynthesis (the creation of sugar from carbon dioxide, water and light energy) end up giving the leaf its green colour. If you maximize the amount of pigments other than chlorophyll you end up decreasing the plant's ability to make its own sugar, resulting in a weakened plant. At the end of the day, the amount of green and reddish pigment balance that optimized a visually-pleasing leaf but also enough green to maintain the plant's photosynthetic ability was about half-and-half: the green around the border of the leaf and the red on the inside. The decreased frill also ended up with a leaf that is strikingly similar to a maple leaf, giving this plant its other common name: the maple-leaved geranium.

Like many non-native plants, this cultivar of geranium is incredibly slow-growing (which is unlike many of its relatives which are fast-growing) and very sensitive to too much and too little water. Until the plant becomes established in the soil, periods of drought can be seriously detrimental to the health of the plant. Once established, flooding and standing water are its biggest enemies. Surprisingly, this cultivar is much more cold-tolerant than its relatives so will last further into the fall than the average geranium will. It is still frost-sensitive and definitely won't tolerate snowfall or freezing, so there is no need to worry about the potential for becoming invasive (at least in Canada).

When is a Pelargonium actually a geranium?

Species name: Pelargonium x hortorum

Common name: Geranium

Location: Ontario

The geranium is one of the few ornamental plants in North America that is native to southern Africa. There are about 200 different species in the genus Pelargonium, and about 500 different cultivars of P. x hortorum alone. There is an enormous amount of variation in this one group of plants, thanks to the ongoing need for humans to have "pretty gardens." Ironically, this need for personal garden beauty has put almost every species in the genus at risk of becoming threatened in the wild, while the ornamental cultivars are at risk of becoming invasive in some areas!

This group of plants is a fantastic example of why you should never rely on common names alone to identify plants. There is actually a genus of plants called Geranium (which I have previously blogged about HERE). To further complicate things, North Americans sometimes refer to the Pelargonium geranium is "storksbills", while Europeans refer to the Geranium geranium as "storksbills." And just to make it even more fun, there is yet another group of plants in Europe referred to as "cranesbills" since they look like the beak of a crane when in flower--and Europeans refer to storks as cranes and cranes as storks. I feel a headache coming on. Does anyone else?!

There are about 20 species of Pelargonium that have very unusual scented leaves, and this property of the leaves has been exploited in cultivars around the world. You can probably tell from the second photo, the petioles of the leaves, the underside of the blade of the leaf, and the stems of the geranium plant are all very hairy. They're completely covered in small plant hairs called trichomes, and the role of these trichomes is mainly for plant defence. They're like microscopic daggers that the plant can use to deter herbivores. Sometimes some plants take this one step further and make modified trichomes that have oil glands at the ends. This oil usually has some sort of very potent smell, which helps deter herbivores when they brush up against the plant. If a plant smells very strongly of any odour, it usually means to stay away. If the herbivore doesn't get it, the oil is usually toxic and kills (or severely damages) the herbivore. Some plant essential oils in concentrated form are so potent that they can paralyze a deer if it consumes only a single leaf! In the geranium, the essential oils smell like other very common scents; everything from oranges to roses and everything in between (there are recognized species that have leaves that smell like almond, apple, coconut, lemon, nutmeg, allspice, old spice, peppermint, rose, southernwood, strawberry, and "fire"). This has been used in various ways to create cultivars with flowers that smell like one scent, and leaves that smell like another. We humans can do some marvellous things when it comes to plant breeding!

Aside from ornamental use, the essential oils of the geranium plant are used quite frequently in the perfume industry, often as a cheap substitute for rose oil. If you buy expensive rose oil perfume, make sure you're getting the right stuff! Also, the common geranium is edible, although I have tried it and it's not very tasty. I would recommend you stick to spinach if you want something green and leafy. If it's edible flowers you want (to decorate a cake or cupcakes), geraniums are a good choice.

When is a Geranium actually a Geranium?

Species name: Geranium maculatum

Common name: Wild geranium, Spotted geranium, Wood geranium

Location: Ontario

I must say, I'm pleased to find out that this is a native plant! The wild geranium is native to eastern North America and the northeastern United States. There's an shockingly similar plant that's native to Europe called the Wild Cranesbill (this plant is also sometimes called the Wild Cranesbill in Canada and Woodland Geranium in Europe...no one said the common names of plants were any less confusing than the Latin names!), but it has slightly different shaped petals so I'm pretty sure this is the North American species. It's one of my favourite "weeds" in the garden that grows either by the pond (think small...it's more like a big permanent puddle than it is a "paddle around in a canoe and find frogs" pond) or by the fence at the back of the yard, but seemingly never in both places in the same year. This year seems to be a "by the fence year"!

Confusingly (no part of this blog post seems to be straight-forward...), this is only somewhat distantly related to the "garden geranium" that many North Americans and Europeans plant in their gardens right around this time of year. Those geraniums are in a genus named Pelargonium, and all of those species are native to South Africa (this refers to the southern part of the continent, not the country; just making sure we're sticking to the "confusing blog post" theme!). Both of these genera are part of the same family, the Geraniaceae. To compare Latin names to common names, the story doesn't get any clearer: species of Pelargonium are referred to as Storksbills, while species of Geranium are referred to as Cranesbills. In North America, we call one species of bird a stork and another a crane, while the reverse is true in Europe. So you can't even use the shape of the mature fruit to determine if it's a crane or a stork bill, because it would depend on your geography which one is which. I'll give you some time to think that one through... :)

Like many spring wild flowers, the wild geranium relies on a rhizome to accumulate nutrients during the fall to use for spring growth. The rhizome is high in tannins (the same chemicals that give dry red wine the "mouth pucker feel") and has been used in the medicinal practices of many indigenous peoples to treat diarrhea, canker sores, gum disease, thrush in babies, venereal disease, and what is probably throat cancer. It might be effective against some mouth-related ailments, but I doubt it's going to turn out to be the next great cure or treatment for cancer. I have been wrong before, so we'll have to wait and see! It has also been used to prevent infection around the site of the umbilical cord cut in newborns, as a component of anti-bacterial face wash, as an anti-itch paste, and to counter-act a "love medicine." This plant sure gets around!