Meet the Wildflowers Growing on Your Doorstep

This week’s entry to Meet the Wildflowers Growing on Your Doorstep, is the wonder Herb Robert.

Easily overlooked, Herb Robert is a plant many people pass without noticing, a wild geranium with delicate pink flowers, growing beneath hedges, beside walls, along woodland edges and in the cracks in paving. It’s surprisingly adaptable and thrives even in tough conditions where many larger plants might struggle. Despite its delicate look, it really knows how to make the best of challenging situations!

Herb Robert, grows generally about 30-40 cm with slender reddish stems and deeply divided, fern-like leaves. Its five-petalled flowers are normally pink or pinkish-purple, often with paler stripes that guide insects towards the centre of the flower. White-flowered forms also occur. The leaves and stems may turn a striking crimson in autumn or when the plant is growing in dry, sunny or exposed conditions. Fine hairs cover much of the plant, and brushing or crushing the leaves releases a distinctive musky smell. People have quite different opinions about this scent! Some find it wonderfully aromatic, while others think it has a bit of a mouse-like smell. That’s probably why it’s been playfully nicknamed Stinking Bob and Stinking Robert!

It is native to Britain and Ireland, and it is highly common and widespread here. It prefers woodland and shady woodland edges, hedgerows and scrub, limestone rocks, scree and pavement, banks and coastal shingle, old walls and rocky ground. Growing abundantly in urban areas, gardens, churchyards, railway edges, alleys, the bottoms of walls, cracks in pavements, and neglected corners. It truly is the epitome of pavement- crack ecology: nature using the tiniest opportunities within the urban landscape.

Herb Roberts' scientific name is Geranium robertianum. Geranium comes from the Greek word meaning crane because the plant’s developing fruit resembles the long beak of a crane. This is also the origin of the familiar name cranesbill for members of the genus. If you look it up in the dictionary, it traces Herb Robert to the medieval Latin Herba Roberti, and claims the name is from the Middle English period. But much of the certainty of the reason for the name has been lost in history, with historical researchers not able to find decisive evidence proving a single explanation, with several explanations proposed:

• Saint Robert of Molesme, an eleventh-century abbot and monastic founder who was sometimes associated with herbal medicine;

• Robin Goodfellow, the mischievous woodland and household spirit later associated with Shakespeare’s Puck;

The safest and most accurate wording is therefore that the name is medieval, but its precise origin remains disputed.

Herb Robert boasts a delightful collection of regional names that really show its charm! Some of the fun names include Red Robin, Robin-in-the-Hedge, St. Robert’s Herb, Fox Geranium, Dragon’s Blood, Death-Comes-Quick (no idea on this one), Jenny Wren, and Kiss-Me-Quick. Isn’t it interesting how many names there are? They reflect just how much this plant was woven into everyday life and folklore in the past!

Its flowers for long periods, often from spring well into autumn, offering nectar and pollen when other small wildflowers may not be available. Frequent visitors include buff-tailed, common carder and white-tailed bumblebees, as well as other bees, flies and occasional butterflies. It is included on the RHS Plants for Pollinators list. It is capable of self-pollination; this mix of reproductive independence and insect visitations explains why it spreads so profusely.

After flowering, Herb Robert produces the pointed, crane-bill-shaped fruits that give geraniums their name. Each fruit contains five single-seeded sections known as mericarps.

As the fruit dries, tension builds within its structure. The sections suddenly spring upwards and catapult the seeds away from the parent plant, sometimes more than 5 metres away! Ants and other small animals also help move the seeds further afield. The explosive dispersal also explains its sudden appearance in pots, wall-crevices and neighbouring gardens.

Herb Robert is a native wildflower and an established part of woodland, hedgerow and urban plant communities.

Its shallow root system makes unwanted plants easy to pull, while those growing harmlessly beside walls, beneath shrubs or in difficult shady corners can be left to provide flowers and ground cover. Personally, I find it charming and notice the number of pollinators it welcome every day, which is why it is a welcome, explosive occupier of my invertebrate garden!

Herb Robert matters because it flowers for such a long season, offering food all that time, it is popular with the pollinators, leaves, roots and pollen used by several plant-feeding invertebrates; vegetation and cover in bare or difficult corners; it is a native plant presence within highly built-up places.

One of the most beautiful things to remember is that urban nature isn't just found in parks or designated reserves. It can be as simple as a tiny pink flower pushing its way through the cracks of an old wall. This little flower quietly supports insects, spreads its seeds across the pavement, and carries on a friendship with people that goes all the way back to the Middle Ages. Isn’t that amazing?