Susan's Herbal Notebook

Plant Lore, Garden Mysteries, and Herbal Magic
for the Cultivated Gardener

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A Geranium by Any Other Name....

My grandmother's windowsill was filled with plants that smelled good when you rubbed the leaves. They didn't have flowers, but if you can smell like lemons, or peppermint, or roses, or peaches, who needs flowers? My grandmother called them scented geraniums.

Except that now I find out that my grandmother was wrong. The scented geranium--and its cousins, the zonal geranium, the ivy and the Martha Washington--aren't really geraniums. They're pelargoniums. That was the name given these tender perennials by the explorers who discovered them growing wild in South Africa early in the seventeenth century. Somebody noticed that the elongated seed case looked like a stork's bill. So the plant was named for the Greek word for stork--pelargos--and it was placed in the Geranium family. Pelargoniums first showed up in England in 1632, and by 1640, Thomas Parkinson was writing up sixteen different varieties in his big new comprehensive garden book, Theatricum Botanicum, which included everything anybody knew about plants at the time.

After that, pelargoniums really got around, partly because they took root so easily. All you had to do was break off a piece and stick it in water. Sailors who stopped off at the Cape of Good Hope obtained cuttings and pretty soon, pelargoniums were sprouting on windowsills all over Europe and America. During Queen Victoria's day, when hot-houses were all the rage, the number of named varieties grew like, well, like wild pelargoniums. But early in the game, the name of the family was substituted for the name of the plant, and pelargoniums became geraniums.

Growing scented pelargoniums isn't hard. You can plant them outside in the summer, and move them indoors to a sunny window when it gets cold. There are hundreds of varieties to choose from, and you can use the fragrant leaves in potpourri, tea, salad dressing, jelly, or cake.

But if you ask for pelargoniums when you go to the nursery, you're likely to get a puzzled look. Better take a leaf from my grandmother's plant and stick with scented geranium.

It's easier to remember.