The weekend has come. The weather is perfect, and we recommend everyone to visit the gardens of the Russian Museum. Summer and Mikhailovsky Gardens are open for walks. The entrance is free. Opening hours from 10 am to 10 pm, entrance closes half an hour before the garden closes.

If you have chosen to walk in the Mikhailovsky Garden, then do not forget to admire the rose garden and flower gardens in the garden. In many flower gardens, you will see a flowering plant commonly called geranium or house geranium. It is more correct to call it pelargonium. The genus Pelargonium and the genus Geranium belong to the Geranium family. But if pelargoniums are mainly plants of South Africa, then geraniums are widespread in Europe and Asia. We already had a story about geraniums in the group, link: https://vk.com/rusmuseum.gardens?w=wall-6269987_4374

The scientific names of these genera are similar. If the genus Geranium comes from “geranos”, which means crane, then Pelargonium from the Greek word “pelargos” – the beak of a stork. For the similarity of the fruit to the beaks of these birds.

For the first time, species of the genus Pelargonium were brought from South Africa to the Netherlands in the middle of the 16th century. Then they were called Geranium Africanum, then there could be descriptions of the special features of the plant. For example, Geranium Africanum, folio Malvae odorato, translated: African geranium, mallow leaves, fragrant. In 1753, Karl Linnaeus named the genus Geranium and described several species. Including the species from which the varieties most often used in modern European floriculture are derived – Geranium zonale L. In 1789, the French botanist Charles Louis L’Héritier de Brutelle transferred this plant to another genus and named it Pelargonium zonale (L.) L’Hérit. And since then African geraniums have become pelargoniums.

The List of All Plants of the First, Second Summer Gardens and the Great Stone Greenhouse, which was compiled in 1738, lists seven varieties of Geranium Africanum. The total number of these plants is 42 pots and 18 boxes. They were called peculiarly. Thus, in the version written by the Russian scribe Geranium Africanum, folio Malvae odorato became “Geranium Africanum folio malfa odorato”. Another example of the name: “” Geranium Afrikanum folio alchimilleirguto et manulato frunies tseis flora rubentibus. “Translated from the language of the scribes of the Russian Empire, this means – Geranium Africanum, folio Alchimillia hirsuto & maculato, frutescens, froribus rubentibus. If translated into modern Russian. will sound like this: “African geranium, the leaves of the cuff are harsh and spotted, bushy, the flowers are reddish.” In the modern botanical nomenclature, these two varieties make up one species, which is called Pelargonium alchemilloides (L.) Aiton. XVIII century called Pelargonium zonale.
At first, pelargoniums were grown as curious plants in greenhouses. Then they began to decorate flowerpots in front of the palaces for the summer. And only at the beginning of the 19th century, when the greenhouse economy of the imperial gardens was able to provide a large number of plants, pelargonium began to be used as a summer decoration of flower beds.

Now on the flower beds of the Mikhailovsky Garden, hybrids of various types of pelargonium are used, which, according to the garden classification, belong to the group “Zonal Pelargoniums”

Enjoy your walks through the gardens of the Russian Museum. Perhaps our information will help surprise those who went for a walk with you.

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