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Wild geranium flowers are about 1.5 " across; they have five spindle-shaped, green sepals with a short red-tipped awn at their tips and five purplish-pink petals, twice the length of the sepals, that are egg-shaped with broady rounded tips and have darker fine radiating lines that function as necter guides. The ten stamens have pale yellow anthers; the single pistel has five carpels that splay at the tip of the pistil into a starfish shape. The anthers produce pollen while the five styles' stigmas remain pressed together; after the anthers are spent, the stigmas separate. The fruit is a candle-shaped, cylindrical structure with a sharp tip. The carpels build up tension as they dry until they spontaneously snap near their base (above the sepals); as the carpel violently curls upward, it flings a single seed considerable distances like a tiny catapult.

Geranium

Geranium maculatum

wild geranium [Blooms: Apr-Jun]