New and improved is not always better. Modern garden varieties of zonal geranium, Pelargonium X hortorum, with bigger, fuller and more profuse blooms, are more colorful than the relatively weedy classic varieties, but they are considerably more demanding. In fact, because they are so unhappy through winter, they are often grown as warm season annuals instead of as perennials.
They are certainly worth growing though, and are reasonably easy to propagate from cuttings. Flowers can be red, pink, white, peachy orange or almost purple. Bloom is almost continuous. Each rounded dark green leaf might be adorned with a darker halo about halfway between the center and the outer margin. Mature plants do not get much more than three feet tall, and not much wider.
Old varieties might get twice as tall, with smaller blooms, and lighter foliage.
Any mention of geraniums always reminds me of my mother, who loved hers so much she’d bring them in through our scorching summers, to let them live in the air conditioning.
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Wow, that is a bit excessive. I enjoy my geraniums, but they are on their own in the weather.
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Well, sure. But my mom was in her 80s when she started with the air conditioning. She’d just moved to Houston, and still was wandering around saying, “What is WITH this weather?”
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Once again, it is clear that we live in different horticultural worlds. Our zonal geraniums are not unhappy during winter, they’re at peace because they are dead.
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Oh! Well, . . . . um . . . okay . . . .
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