Award-winning botanist Pieter van Wyk at the |Ai-|Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier Park has discovered a new Pelargonium species.
South Africa (09 November 2023) – SANParks is excited to announce the discovery of a new pelargonium species in the Richtersveld by award-winning botanist Pieter van Wyk, Curator of the |Ai-|Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier Park Desert Botanical Garden and Nursery.
Pelargonium is a genus of flowering plants that includes about 280 species of perennials, succulents, and shrubs, commonly called geraniums, pelargoniums, or storksbills. Geranium is also the botanical name and common name of a separate genus of related plants, also known as cranesbills. Both genera belong to the family Geraniaceae. Carl Linnaeus originally included all the species in one genus, Geranium, and they were later separated into two genera by Charles Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle in 1789.
While Geranium species are mostly temperate herbaceous plants, dying down in winter, Pelargonium species are evergreen perennials indigenous to warm temperate and tropical regions of the world, with many species in southern Africa. They are drought and heat-tolerant but can tolerate only minor frosts. Some species are extremely popular garden plants, grown as houseplants and bedding plants in temperate regions. They have a long flowering period, with flowers mostly in red, orange, or white, but intensive breeding has produced a huge array of cultivars with great variety in size, flower colour, leaf form and aromatic foliage.
The new pelargonium has a habit like tenicule but flowers completely different as well, it does not form a tuber.
Pieter van Wyk says the following: “ The flowers are giant, the largest in the genus I have ever seen in the Richtersveld region.”
The new species grows in deep red dune sand about 30km south of Alexander Bay. Pieter has collected cuttings for ex-situ conservation purposes to grow at the |Ai-|Ais/Richtersveld Transfrontier Park nursery.
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