Cuttings: Geranium defeat

THE magazine Gardening Which? ran a poll among its readers recently to decide whether to call geraniums geraniums - or pelargoniums. Pelargoniums won by 485 to 138. For Susan Conder, author of The Complete Geranium (Collins & Brown pounds 9.99), the vote came too late. And anyway, The Complete Pelargonium sounds like a collection of hymn tunes. Her book is concise, clear, and will lead you safely through the rigours of raising geraniums from seed (which you should be doing now). It includes recipes for potpourri, lemon geranium cake, crystallised geranium leaves and even one for geranium face cream. Only the scanty index lets it down.