Victorians
loved their 'geraniums' - a very general name which
people then, as now, also used to include pelargoniums.
Hibberd carefully explained that Pelargoniums (or storkbills,
which their seed pods resembled) mostly came from the
Cape of Good Hope, while geraniums were mostly herbs
of Europe. The most prominent native British geranium
was the 'merry little herb Robert of the mountains'
(Geranium Robertianum) and the sedate but very
lovely blue geranium of the valleys (G. pratense).
Whatever
the Victorians actually called them, it was the pelargonium
which they used so extensively in their gardens. They
generally planted out two major classes of the pelargonium,
the Pelargonium speciosum which was characterized
by their wrinkled and deeply notched green leaves, and
the P. zonale, 'a somewhat ugly thing', with coarse
leaves distinctly zoned and narrow-petalled flowers
so that they were often referred to as windmills.
Seedlings
of pelargoniums were generally easily raised, and pelargoniums
(or geraniums) were one of the staples of the Victorian
flower bed.
