Wild Geranium Traditional Geocache

The Wild Geranium is abundant along both sides of the trail.

 Geranium maculatum, the spotted geranium, wood geranium, or wild geranium is a woodland perennial plant native to eastern North America, from southern Manitoba and southwestern Quebec south to Alabama and Georgia and west to Oklahoma and South Dakota.

The flowers are 2.5–4 cm diameter, with five rose-purple, pale or violet-purple (rarely white) petals and ten stamens; they appear from April to June in loose clusters of two to five at the top of the stems. The fruit capsule, which springs open when ripe, consists of five cells each containing one seed joined to a long beak-like column 2–3 cm long (resembling a crane's bill) produced from the center of the old flower. . Plants go dormant in early summer after seed is ripe and dispersed.

The plant has been used in herbal medicine, and is also grown as a garden plant. Wild Geranium is considered an astringent, a substance that causes contraction of the tissues and stops bleeding. The Mesquakie Indians brewed a root tea for toothache and for painful nerves and mashed the roots for treating hemorrhoids.

The cache is a Big "micro" camoed pill bottle, the Push and Turn kind. Rolled log with rubber band and dry pack in plastic zip lock. If you put the rubber band around your finger, you're less apt to lose it. Please try to get it out without tweezers, they tend to kill the bags. It's tied in, low, right next to the trail, behind geraniums. Please recamo and BYOP.