John Lewis - Growing & Using Scented Geraniums

by Mary Peddie, Judy Lewis, John Lewis

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Edited by Cornelia Parkinson
Cover design by Carol J. Jessop (Black Trout Design)
Illustrations by Alison Kolesar
Text design and production by Michelle Arabia

Copyright 1991 by Storey Publishing, LLC

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Printed in the United States

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Peddie, Mary 1921

Growing & using scented geraniums / by Mary Peddie,

Judy Lewis, John Lewis.

p. cm

ISBN 0-88266-699-1

1. Scented geraniums. 2. Scented geraniumsUtilization.

I. Lewis, Judy 1941. II. Lewis, John 1937 . III. Title.

IV. Title: Growing and using scented geraniums.

SB303.S34P43 1991

635.933216dc20

91-17233
CIP

The popularity of the scented geraniums is well deserved. They are gregarious plants, mixing happily in the garden with one another or with other plants. They are excellent container specimens, and quite amenable to indoor life. For the most part the flowers are modest and unassuming: it is the varied textures and scented leaves of these plants that continue to charm gardeners worldwide, just as they fascinated Europeans who discovered them in South Africa in the early 1600s.

Certainly nothing like them existed in Europe, and it must have been with great glee that they were received and propagated. They were quickly identified as belonging to the Family Geraniaceae and became the scented geraniums. A century later, when Linnaeus, the great Swedish botanist, brought order to our understanding of the plant world, the Geraniaceae Family was divided into three genera the true Geraniums, the Erodiums, and the Pelargoniums and the scenteds were more correctly identified as pelargoniums.

The pelargoniums number more than 280 species and subspecies, mostly native to South Africa. Of this number perhaps 30 species are cultivated as scented-leaf geraniums. But they have crossed with one another and with other species of pelargoniums to produce a bewildering range of cultivars. There are brother and half-brothers, cousins and half-cousins.

But to this day, the bright, continuously blooming common pelargonium a colorful addition to any window box and its cousin, the fragrant-leafed plant, are incorrectly dubbed geraniums. Gardeners in England, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa speak of pelargoniums, but here in the United States we recognize them as geraniums. As we become more knowledgeable and sophisticated about our gardening, perhaps we, too, will someday correctly refer to them as the scented pelargoniums.

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were marked by expansion and adventure. Nearly every great voyage of discovery had a plantsman, or at least a learned man, aboard to observe and collect examples of the flora and fauna of strange lands. These voyages were commercial ventures; plants, sought for their medicinal properties, were profitable acquisitions. Certainly these unusual plants, which mimicked so many other known plants, must have some curative properties! And so it was that the scented geraniums found places of honor in the great botanical collections of the day.

Because they were easily propagated and their scents so unusual, the scenteds quickly became popular subjects for all types of gardens throughout Europe. They were found in both the great manor house orangeries and in cottage gardens. Although perennial in their native habitat, they could be successfully wintered over in northern Europe. Many survived on a cottage windowsill. This ability to withstand rigorous treatment made them well traveled and universally loved. They came to North America with the earliest settlers, and by 1790 colonial plantsmen listed some twenty varieties.

It was not until the medical world accepted the reclassification of these plants as pelargoniums that the search for medicinal properties ceased. A few of the pelargoniums did have some uses medicinally, but these were not the species we now classify as having a scented leaf. However, the scenteds continued to be associated with herbs.

Because they smelled like certain foods, some of them began to be used in cooking by 1818. The rose geranium was added to jelly, and some stalwart soul, who had probably been to Turkey, even began making a rose geranium syrup similar to the attar of rose syrup used on sweets in the Turkish courts. But for the most part the leaves were used in potpourri and in sleep pillows. Between 1800 and the 1890s only a few new scenteds appeared, most of which were deliberately hybridized in botanic gardens in Europe.

It was the Victorians, with their lush houseplant and lavish gardens, who truly began to confuse us about the scented geraniums. Growers of the late 1890s listed dozens of varieties, yet descriptions of many of these were quite similar. Apparently some crosses and recrosses occurred naturally, but much hybridization was deliberate and growers arbitrarily named cultivars as they pleased. Some growers attempted to define the hybrid, but many simply tacked on a salable name (and are apt to do so today) and introduced a new geranium. Even using modern techniques, we will never be able to classify precisely all the scented pelargoniums now sold.

In the 1940s a group met in New England to discuss this problem and concluded that the best way to bring a modicum of order to the situation was to classify them by scent. In this, we use three criteria: first the scent; second the leaf shape, foliage color, and texture; and lastly the flower shape, color, and reproductive parts.

But another variable enters into this fact finding: how and where a geranium is grown. Garden plants exhibit growth patterns and coloration that may not be so outstanding in a container-grown plant. And sometimes the neat container-grown plant bears little resemblance to the rampant brother in the garden. Different soils produce oblique differences in the very same plant. The best we can do is give some general outlines and let gardeners have the fun of deciding which scented is growing in their garden or on their patio.

One bit of lore needs to be refuted. Occasionally someone in the greenhouse says, Oh, the scented geraniums I dont grow them because they are poisonous! We have tried unsuccessfully to find the source of this idea. They are not poisonous at least not in the uses we make of them. We do not know if they could be used for grazing cattle, but the flowers, leaves, and extracts have all been used for centuries.