Anyone who romped across the meadow as a child will perhaps be able to remember him. The Meadow Cranesbill is increasingly found in meadows, but it also finds a home elsewhere. What characteristics and requirements does it have?

The Meadow Wanted Poster is edible and has a healing effect

All significant facts at a glance

  • Plant family: Cranesbill family
  • Botanical name: Geranium pratense
  • Origin: Europe, China, Siberia
  • Occurrence: roadsides, meadows, gardens, river courses
  • Growth: upright, bushy
  • Foliage: heavily lobed, deciduous, hairy
  • Flowering period: June to August
  • flowers: bowl-shaped, fivefold, light blue-violet
  • Fruits: split fruit
  • Location: sunny to semi-shady
  • Soil: nutrient-rich, moist
  • Specialties: edible, medicinal

A perennial flower with healing potential

The meadow cranesbill is perennial thanks to its strong rootstock in the ground. Unlike some other cranesbill plants, it is not poisonous but edible. For example, you can eat its young leaves, buds and flowers. It has a cooling, decongestant and anti-inflammatory effect and helps with, among other things:

  • insomnia
  • hot flashes
  • bleeding
  • warts
  • ulcers

Hairy from bottom to top

It stands between 30 and 100 cm high. Its growth is upright and takes on a bushy, herbaceous appearance. The slender stems are hairy. The leaves also have many fine hairs. Admittedly, this makes consumption less of a culinary highlight.

The long-stalked leaves have 5 to 7 lobes. The lobes are strongly pronounced. At the end they taper to a point, while they are roughly serrated at the edge. The color describes a matte green. In autumn the foliage is shed.

Beautiful flowers and extraordinary fruits

The flowers appear from June. They are present until August and in exceptional cases until September. They usually appear in pairs. They are very similar to the wood cranesbill. But they are more bluish than the flowers of the forest dweller.

Here are more characteristics of the flowers and the fruits that follow them:

  • 3 to 4 cm wide
  • 5 petals and 5 sepals
  • light blue-purple flower color
  • dark veining
  • cupped
  • wide open
  • sloping down when it rains
  • beaked fruits that eject their seeds from September

tips

How about a trip to the meadow, collecting the meadow cranesbill and then a wild herb salad or a soup with the buds of this plant?

Category:

Vegetable garden