Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
We’ve had this pelargonium for more than a year, so it’s not surprising that its now looking leggy undernourished, but the leaf-scarred stems make it more interesting to draw.
Drawn in Procreate with the ‘Technical Pen’, a plain no-nonsense virtual pen.
After a year, our zonal pelargonium is beginning to look a bit leggy.
Drawn in Procreate on the iPad using the Tinderbox virtual pen from the Inking section. Having got through all three of my PenTips 2 soft Apple Pencil tips, I’m now back to a plain Apple Pencil tip but the canvas texture of the PenTips Magnetic Matte Screenprotector is working well for me, an improvement on drawing on the iPad’s glass screen.
The horseshoe geranium, more accurately known as the zonal pelargonium, is a hybrid species whose wild ancestors grew in Mediterranean climate zones. Because it wasn’t suited to surviving our winters, gardeners used to keep it going through the winter as stem cuttings. This can mean the expense of heating a greenhouse and there is the possibility of plants being susceptible to virus, so it’s more usual these days to grow it from seed.
Our neighbour has grown some this year and gave us this plant as a small seedling. It wasn’t too happy growing on our kitchen windowsill and its leaves turned red. We’ve discovered this was probably because it was getting too cold at night. It’s thriving now though in its small pot. Apparently if you give them too large a pot, they put their efforts into vegetative growth instead of flowering.
The flowers have no scent but the leaves have a pungency that reminds me of dustiness. This probably dates back to my childhood experience of geraniums, which were often leggy plants growing on dusty windowsills in primary schools.
The cold hasn’t just affected our indoor geranium: the sweet peas have been very slow to start flowering and the three stems in this bottle are the first we’ve picked.
