Long-beaked stork's-bill

Long-beaked stork's-bill / Erodium gruinum / ابرة العجوز

© All rights reserved by www.mahmiyat.ps

Status: Common

Long-beaked stork's-bill is annual plant belong to the Geraniaceae family. Leaves are alternate, compound, pinnate, dentate or serrate; hairy, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, deeply lobed. Stem 10-70 cm height, with spreadings or deflexed hairs. The flower has 5 free petals of blue or violet; 

Flowering Period: February-May.

Fruits are Capsules, hairy, with narrow beak, 6-11 cm long.

Ecology: Hillslopes, stony, grassy and waste places, wall ruins, coastal sands. The plant is glycophyte in terms of salt resistance; the plant belongs to the Mediterranean area.

Medical uses: Young Erodium is a very tasty plant and can be eaten raw in salad or cooked. It contains vitamin K which plays a very important role in blood clothing and bone health. Erodium leaf makes a very good tea to induce sweating and it is diuretic. Soaking the leaves in bathwater may relieve rheumatic pain. Other uses are that the entire plant can be used to make green dye of clothes, which doesn’t need mordant to set the color.

Cool facts: The plant is very good weather forecaster .The little tails on the seeds coil and uncoil to protect the seeds, depending on the humidity in the air.

Distributions: Erodium includes about 60 species, native to North Africa, The Middle East, and Australia. In Palestine it grows in Mediterranean Woodlands and Shrublands, Semi-steppe shrublands, Shrub-steppes, Deserts and extreme deserts.

Other names: crane stork's bill, Iranian stork's bill.

IUCN red list status: not evaluated

Local status: least concern