Pelargonium vs. Geranium

The disagreement about the naming of pelargoniums is an old one and even in the late 19th century gardening publications were complaining about gardeners who confused the two. Botanically, the genus Pelargonium includes all species plants and the modern hybrids that are commonly known as geraniums. The 18th-century botanist Carl Linnaeus grouped pelargoniums, erodiums and geraniums together and it was not until the beginning of the 19th century that botanists, with a few dissenters, agreed that they were different genera. It is peculiar that two centuries later no one would call an erodium a geranium but we are still referring to pelargoniums as geraniums. At the time of the change erodiums, geraniums and pelargoniums were popularly known as heronsbills, cranesbills and storksbills, respectively, after the resemblance of their seedpods to the beaks of birds. The word pelargonium is derived from the Greek word pelargos, meaning a stork.