WILDFLOWERS OF NEW MEXICO

Widespread in NM mountains and foothills, this 7–32-inch tall plant has hairy stems, flowers with whitish petals with reddish lines, and palmately lobed leaves with pointed teeth.

FLOWERS: June–August. The 1-inch wide (25 mm) flowers have 5 white to pinkish petals with dark lines, each petal 3/8–3/4-inch (10–18 mm) long, with rounded tips and sparsely hairy on basal half; 10 arching red filaments with purple anthers, 5 point-tipped sepals beneath petals. Fruit is a slender capsule, 3/4-1-inch (20–25 mm) long, pointed like a crane’s bill.

LEAVES: Basal on long stalks (petioles), blades palmate with spreading segments, 2–6 inches wide (5–15 cm), with 3–7 broad lobes, each with coarse, pointed teeth; surfaces sparsely short-hairy. Stem leaves opposite, smaller.

HABITAT: Moist sandy, gravelly, loamy soils, meadows, streamsides, openings; pinyon-juniper, ponderosa, spruce-fir subalpine forests.

ELEVATION: 7,000–10,900 feet.

RANGE: Throughout mountain regions in western U. S.

SIMILAR SPECIES: Mogollon Geranium, G. lentum, has reflexed (bent back) white petals with yellowish-green stamens. Purple Geranium, G. caespitosum, in much the same range and habitat, has pinkish-purple petals, often bent back.

NM COUNTIES: Western 2/3 NM at med- to high-elevations in moist habitats: Bernalillo, Catron, Cibola, Colfax, Grant, Lincoln, Los Alamos, McKinley, Mora, Otero, Rio Arriba, San Juan, San Miguel, Sandoval, Santa Fe, Sierra, Socorro, Taos, Torrance, Valencia.