2. Geraniaceae
牻牛儿苗科 mang niu er miao ke
Authors: Langran Xu & Carlos Aedo
Herbs, annual or perennial [rarely shrublets or shrubs]. Stipules present. Leaves alternate or opposite, palmately or pinnately divided, petiolate. Flowers in cymes, pseudoumbels, rarely flowers solitary, usually bisexual, actinomorphic, or ± zygomorphic. Sepals 5, usually distinct, imbricate. Petals usually 5, distinct. Fertile stamens 5 or 10, usually in 2 whorls, sometimes a whorl reduced to staminodes; filaments basally connate or distinct; anthers 2-locular, longitudinally dehiscent. Ovary superior; carpels 5, connate; ovules 1 or 2 per locule, pendulous, anatropous. Fruit a schizocarp with 5 1-seeded awned mericarps which separate elastically from a central beak. Seeds usually with little or no endosperm; embryo folded.
Six genera and ca. 780 species: widely distributed in temperate, subtropic, and tropical mountains; two genera and 54 species (18 endemic, three introduced) in China.
Pelargonium, including P. ×domesticum Bailey, P. ×graveolens L’Héritier, P. ×hortorum Bailey, P. peltatum (Linnaeus) L’Héritier, P. radens H. E. Moore (P. radula (Cavanilles) L’Héritier), and P. zonale (Linnaeus) L’Héritier, treated in FRPS (43(1): 83-86. 1998), are only cultivated as garden and potted plants in China and so are not treated here.
Xu Langran, Huang Chengchiu & Huang Baoxian. 1998. Geraniaceae (excluding Biebersteinia). In: Xu Langran & Huang Chengchiu, eds., Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 43(1): 18-89.
