Erodium guttatum, annual or perennial?

[mark smyth]

I had contacted the collection holder a few years ago a plant I was looking for - the lovely pink eyed David Crocker - he said at the time he wanted someone to take it on. When I checked the NCCPg web site yesterday there was no mention

[Hoy]

Helen's plant is Erodium arborescens, and if you can translate
http://blog.daum.net/_blog/BlogTypeView.do?blogid=0CyIa&articleno=17041254&categoryId=0&regdt=20100405142916#ajax_history_home

http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search/display.do?f=2001/EG/EG01001.xml;EG2001000080

[maggiepie]

Trond, I am not convinced it is E.arborescens. The flowers in the link you give don't have black centres.

The pics of both arborescens and guttatum here, look so similar I can't decide which is which but both have black centres.


http://www.tela-botanica.org/sites/botanique/fr/documents/biblio/articles_en_ligne/apercu_de_la_taxonomie_du_genre_erodium.pdf

If you scroll down you can see pics of both plants. Leaves look pretty much the same too.

Here is a pic of my plant's seeds.

Not that they seem to help either.

[Roma]

I've been folowing this thread as I have a pot with 3 seedlings sown last January.  No flowers yet. One looks fine but the other two look a bit iffy.  According to the AGS Encyclopaedia of Alpines Erodium guttatum comes from southern Spain and north Africa and is not reliably hardy.  They say it is confused with forms of Erodium petraeum which seems to have many subspecies and synonyms. Why? I don't know.  The flowers and leaves are completely different.  There is a hybrid x kolbiense, petraeum ssp glandulosum x rupestre.  I have a cultivar called 'Natasha'.  This has silvery, feathery leaves and the flowers are white or pale pink with darker veins and a dark blotch on the upper two petals.

 

[maggiepie]

Roma,

How long did it take the seeds to germinate for you?
My plants were sown in baggies with vermiculite last January too but I planted them out as soon as the ground thawed and warmed.
They grew very fast and were flowering by July and kept flowering until the killing frosts.
I am going to treat mine as annuals from now on.
I find they germinate within two weeks in a baggie.

[Roma]

Helen,

I don't always keep a note of germination dates but do try for a short time each year.  I see one germinated in April and I think the others were a bit slower.  i am not very good at getting things moving and planted out quickly enough.  Mine were sown in the cold frame and subjected to frost last year and this.  The part of the frame where I keep seed pots gets no sun in winter so the snow does not melt and I suppose insulates to some extent.  I'd be hopeless germinating seeds in baggies.  I'd never get them potted in time.  Some survive years in the original seed pots.

[maggiepie]

Roma,

I only know my germination times because the date of bagging is written down.
I only play with seeds during winter when we are housebound most of the time, helps keep me sane.
The baggies are my lifeline.
Just tried some guttatum seeds, first one has germinated in 5 days.
If I can keep it alive it will flower this summer.

[Roma]

My surviving Erodium guttatum sat doing not very much all last year.  I took it into the greenhouse for the winter.  In spring I repotted it still in a 7cm pot as it did not have much root.  It grew slowly over the summer and about a week ago I spotted a couple of flower buds.  The flowers lasted a day each.  I managed to photograph the second one.

[maggiepie]

Looks same as mine, Roma.

I didn't grow any this year but the past two years I started seed indoors and planted them out in the garden as soon as it warmed up.
They all flowered profusely and died in winter but they do produce plenty of seeds so easy to grow them as annuals.