Erodium saxatile

Long lived perennial herb, 5-25(40) cm; root a thick, smooth-skinned light brown simple rhizome or almost tuberous swollen taproot, the swelling below the stem branches and above the roots.

Leaves: green, ovate to triangular-ovate, bipinnatisect, with intercalary leaflets, with short adpressed, and long erect eglandular hairs, and a few glands and glandular hairs; leaflets 9-13; tertiary lobes 0.5-1.5 mm wide, generally 1-2 x long as wide, in the same plane, linear to linear-elliptical, acute or subacute; lamina 0.9-8.5 cm; petiole 1.8-12.4 mm; stipules 4.5-9mm, soldered on half or more of there length, triangular or broadly triangular.

Erodium saxatile; Marie Addymans Collection at Hampton Court Show; 08/07/1993; Photo credit: Benjamin Coultrup.

Inflorescence: umbels of 2-5 flowers; flowers 20-30 mm; bracts 4-7, 4-9 mm, whitish, narrowly membranaceous; sepals 5-8 mm; mucro 0.8-1.5 mm; petals 7.5-12.5 mm, subequal, overlapping, silky pink, sometimes whitish, with a network of deeper pink veins but no blotches, rounded at the tips; nectaries bright green; staminodes pink to violet, glabrous; stamen filaments pink or violet, with 2 teeth near the base and very feebly hairy; anthers purple; pollen coral-pink; stigmas whitish-pink.

Erodium saxatile at Manorfield, Ashford, Kent, UK; 01/06/1996; Photo credit: Benjamin Coultrup

Fruit: fruit 26-38 mm; mericarp 5-7 mm; foveole with no furrow, and with many short, capitate glands. 2n=20

Distribution: endemic to Spain, SE, province of Alicante, mountains behind the coast, in fissures of calcareous rock at 350-1600m

Synonym: Erodium valentinum (Lange)Greuter & Burdet

Erodium saxatile; Alicante, España; Apr 16, 2019; Photo credit: Sergio Picó; from iNaturalist.org; licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Erodium saxatile; Alicante, España; Apr 16, 2019; Photo credit: Sergio Picó; from iNaturalist.org; licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC 4.0)