�y��vlog

This same flashy color pattern decorates the fancy-leaved Pelargonium `Miss Burdett-Coutts’, so colorful it is best grown alone in a pot, its red flowers nipped off.

This variety, Pelargonium citronella, has a citrus scent, but there are many others with aromas including chocolate and mint.

The plant commonly known as a geranium, he explains, is actually a pelargonium, a different genus entirely.

It’s a hot July day and we’re standing in a large and slightly clammy greenhouse that contains more than 120 pelargonium species, a collection that belongs to Carole Bamford, the founder of the pioneering British brand Daylesford Organic.

Unsurprisingly, then, the scent many of us know as geranium — mossy, deeply green and medicinal — is, in fact, extracted from the leaves of pelargonium graveolens.