Shining cranesbill (Geranium lucidum)

Dear Readers, it’s so easy to look at every little pink-flowered geranium growing in rocky and disturbed spots and assume that it’s yet more herb robert. Indeed, I think I’d walked past these flowers in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery many times without noticing something very obvious – the leaves are all wrong. The foliage of herb robert is delicate, ferny stuff, while the foliage of this little plant forms a kind of five-pointed leafy ‘hand’. The name ‘shining’ comes from the fresh, glossy leaves which, once you’ve got your eye in, are nothing like those of other geraniums.

Shining cranesbill flower and glossy leaf (Photo One)

Another feature that shining cranesbill shares with herb robert is that the foliage goes fiery red in the autumn – you can see it just beginning to turn in the photo below. It also has those bright red stems that I think of as typical of herb robert. With wild geraniums, the leaves really are your best bet for ID – there are so many little pink-flowered jobs that it becomes very hard otherwise.

Photo Two

Habitat is another feature – herb robert really is the geranium for urban settings, as it seems to pop up in every unattended plant pot and crack in the pavement. Shining cranesbill, like many of the others in the family, is more of a plant of walls and churchyards. It is native to the UK and mainland Europe, Asia and North Africa but, along with herb robert, it has been imported into North America, where it is known as shiny geranium. Here the usual story plays out, with the plant becoming a noxious, unchecked weed that overwhelms native plants in woodland settings. One reason for its success (apart from the lack of insect species to keep it in check) is that the seed is thrown explosively out of the capsule, so the plant can, with successive generations, move up a wall or a tree trunk, or advance up a slope. In fact, considering how well-behaved it is in its native habitat I am stunned to see how enthusiastically shining cranesbill has taken to life in North America, particularly in the Pacific North-West – in the April 17 edition of the Kings County Noxious Weeds Blog, there is this:

‘To quote Ed Alverson, a botanist from Oregon who has extensive experience battling shiny geranium, “this is pretty much the most diabolical invasive plant I’ve ever encountered”. He adds, “In my 3 decades of experience with this species I’ve not seen anyone successfully “control” it, anywhere or any time. Not that it is impossible, I’ve just not seen anyone take it as seriously as is necessary, especially early on”.

And look at this photo of an oak wood infestation in Washington State.

A shining cranesbill infestation in Washington State, USA (Photo Three)

Now, in the UK it appears that shining cranesbill is a foodplant for the caterpillar of just one moth, known as the annulet (Charissa obscurata). This is a rather subtle moth, coloured in shades of grey and black that give it a rather soot-spattered look. However, it nearly had a place in history: in 1878, an entomologist named Albert Brydges Farn wrote to Charles Darwin, saying that he had found annulet moths with dark grey wings, rather than the usual paler colour – he thought that this might relate to the fact that the chalk cliffs where the moths were found had been darkened by the smoke from the local lime kilns. Alas, Darwin never replied, and so the peppered moth became the poster-child for what became known as ‘industrial melanism’ – the way that evolution acts to favour animals that can blend in more easily with a blackened environment.

Incidentally, an annulet is described as a ‘small band encircling a column’, maybe because of the way that the rings encircle the body? Your guess is every bit as good as mine. I think there must be a whole book to be written on the derivation of moth names.

An annulet moth (Charissa obscurata) From John Curtis’s British Entomology, Volume Six first published in 1824.

Now, I wondered if humans could eat shining cranesbill, as my thoughts during lockdown turn to food rather more often than usual: the answer seems to be ‘who knows?’ because I can find not a single recipe, though it is noted that it isn’t eaten by rabbits or deer, which probably contributes to its invasive qualities across the Atlantic.

Medicinally the plant apparently has uses as a diuretic and astringent (according to the Glossary of Indian Medicinal Plants from 1986) but doesn’t appear to have been much used in the UK, maybe because herb robert was such a popular and widely used herbal remedy.

Apparently shining cranesbill is one of the over 30 species of plant that have the common name ‘bachelor’s buttons’ – it is known by this name in Lancashire, while herb robert bears this moniker in Kent. I can’t imagine that this delicate plant would last very long in anyone’s buttonhole, but maybe the leaves made up for the wilting flower. The name ‘cranesbill’ comes from the shape of the seed capsules, which are said to look like the beak of a bird – in fact ‘geranium’ is a direct translation of the Greek for ‘crane’s bill’.

The seed dispersal mechanism of Geranium pratense, the meadow cranesbill, showing where the name comes from (Photo Four)

And so, dear readers, a poem. I cannot tell you how much I love this newly-discovered work – it fills me with such longing. Every separate verse feels like a pebble dropped into still water, the ripples spreading out. It feels like something to be savoured slowly, like a fine malt-whisky. See what you think.

Riasg Buidhe by Thomas A. Clark

Photo CreditsPhoto One by Amadej Trnkoczy from https://www.flickr.com/photos/atrnkoczy/27226059712/

Photo Two by By Cwmhiraeth – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49710097

Photo Three from https://www.nwcb.wa.gov/weeds/shiny-geranium

Photo Four by CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=256121