Authors: L.  

Botanical Description

biennial or short-lived perennial with persistent rosettes. Leaves 3-8cm or more long, pedately divided into five bipinnatifid leaflets, often red-flushed on long red or red-brown stalks. Flowers 1.1-1.6cm wide, pink or white, spring to autumn and off and on through winter if mild. Europe, North Africa east to China and west to Macronesia. A variable species and hardly choice enough for the rock garden where it can seed rather too exuberantly. The following white-flowered variants might however, be considered as short-term pot plants in the alpine house where they will flower all winter. G.r. 'Album' is semi-prostrate with largish white flowers having red to red-brown calyces. G.r. 'Celtic Dwarf (syn.G.r. subsp. celticum) of gardens forms bright green compact plants with smallish white flowers having green calyces. G.r. 'Cygnus' resembles 'Album' but is much greener having only a little of the red-brown pigment. It was formerly known as G.r. forma leucanthemum.