Food-Gardening Lessons From A Wartime Victory Garden

Can You Identify this Spring Flower? Geranium maculatum Identification

“I found this flower growing under a tree in my yard this spring. Can you tell me what it is?” -Question from Laura in Reading, Pennsylvania

ANSWER: Hi Laura, Lucky you! You have a beautiful spotted geranium (Geranium maculatum) in your yard. This is not a weed! It’s a lovely native woodland perennial that can be found growing across eastern North America. It blooms in spring and then dies back a bit in the heat of summer.

Let it bloom and grow. You may even planting other complementary native woodland plants with it. Try the fringed bleeding heart (Dicentra eximia), Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides), and woodland phlox (Phlox divaricata).

Happy gardening!

Jessie

About JESSIE KEITH

Plants are the lens Jessie views the world through because they’re all-sustaining. (“They feed, clothe, house and heal us. They produce the air we breathe and even make us smell pretty.”) She’s a garden writer and photographer with degrees in both horticulture and plant biology from Purdue and Michigan State Universities. Her degrees were bolstered by internships at Longwood Gardens and the American Horticultural Society. She has since worked for many horticultural institutions and companies and now manages communications for Sun Gro Horticulture, the parent company of Black Gold. Her joy is sharing all things green and lovely with her two daughters.

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