Geranium farreri and Geranium magniflorum

Submitted by Lori S. on

I would love to find seeds of Geranium farreri and Geranium magniflorum, both exquisite plants that grew well here (though I eventually lost them.... grrr!)
If you have these and are willing to trade seeds, please let me know!

Comments

Submitted by Tim Ingram on Sat, 12/31/2011 - 02:49

Rick & Lori - I have tried Geranium farreri on and off for many years and it is certainly not easy to keep, but a lovely plant. I will keep an eye on it setting any seed next year. Really grateful for your link to Rannveig's cubit in Iceland. This is somewhere I visited as a student and have never forgotten - an amazing place.

Submitted by Lori S. on Wed, 02/01/2012 - 20:00

Okay, I've finally figured out what a "Cubit" is... (other than the length of the pharoah's forearm...  ;D)  
Unfortunately, Rannveig also lost her G. farreri, so I was not able to hit her up for seeds, but on the positive side, though, I got seeds of Geranium magniflorum (ex. Joubert's Pass, E. Cape, South Africa) from the NARGS seed-ex!   :)

Looking back through what I jokingly refer to as "my records"  (:rolleyes:), I bought a plant of G. farreri in 2005, and lost it in the spring of 2011... not a bad span of time, but why oh why did I not propagate it while I had it?!?  It was in alkaline, clay soil, as opposed to rock garden conditions.  Its demise coincided with the second of 3 unusually snowy winters in a row, when the snow-melting chinooks did not take the snow away and expose the ground (as has been more usual through our 16 year span of living here)... it is only circumstantial evidence but I think it may have gotten too wet in spring, in regular soil, with all the melting snow.

Submitted by Boland on Tue, 02/07/2012 - 11:47

I grew G. farreri in a pot plunged in my frame for 3 years.  I planted it out last summer so it is going through its first winter outside...now under 3 feet of snow; it has never set seed.  G. magniflorum is now 3 years old outside from day one.  It survives but is a shy bloomer and had never set seed.

Submitted by Lori S. on Tue, 02/07/2012 - 19:55

Mine was a little thing, no more than about 5" tall.
eFlora of China notes "stems 9-16 cm tall":
http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=3&taxon_id=200012388

(By the way, when I do a google image search on Geranium farreri, here's the result... and the first plant is definitely not G. farreri - it looks instead like a G. x cantabrigiense cultivar... not a great advertisement for the accuracy of the plant database that's showing the picture.  ;D)
http://www.google.com/search?q=Geranium+farreri&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&h...

Submitted by Mark McD on Tue, 02/07/2012 - 20:26

Lori wrote:

(By the way, when I do a google image search on Geranium farreri, here's the result... and the first plant is definitely not G. farreri - it looks instead like a G. x cantabrigiense cultivar... not a great advertisement for the accuracy of the plant database that's showing the picture.  ;D)
http://www.google.com/search?q=Geranium+farreri&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&h...

Oftentimes, in Google image searches one is lucky to even get the right genus. ;D  Actually, it has gotten better than it used to be, and google image searches (which I do all the time) can be fairly good at getting a "majority impression" of the true plant, but be wary, it can also give a "majority impression" of the wrong plant when that plant is generally misidentified in the first place. However, one can used google images, then mouse over them to see what site they're coming from, and get a jumpstart at finding images from more reliable sources having some credibility.  I'm surprised with the google image search of Geranium farreri, just how many images look correct, and what a superb species it is.  I've never seen the true species in person, one that I've always wanted.

Submitted by cohan on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 00:10

Google image searches must definitely be taken with a grain of salt! with rarely pictured taxa, it often yields no useful results, and with well known genera often gives many species other than what you wanted! Still, if you dig a bit, you can often find something... there were actually a lot of farreri, relatively speaking-- and it did seem (even without opening the pages- something I don't do any more than I have to with the nature of my internet connection!) the first image was one to be discarded...lol