Pelargonium triste, is a geophyte with flowering stems of about high on average, that is assigned to the Stork's bill family. It has hairy, divided and softly feathered leaves that are about twice as long as wide, resemble carrot leaves, and emerge from the tuberous rootstock directly at ground level. The bracts on the flowering stems are usually much smaller than the leaves at ground level. It carries inconspicuous, star-shaped flowers, each with a "spur" that is merged with the flower stalk, with five free green sepals, 5 pale yellow petals, 10 filaments, only 7 of them initially carrying an anther and a style with 5 curved branches. The flowers are crowded in umbels, and mostly there are slight to intense maroon to black markings that may be small or cover the entire petal except for a narrow line along the margins. In the evening, the flowers start to smell like cloves. Flowers may be found practically year round, but most proficiently from September to December. As typical for many species in the Stork's bill family, its fruits resemble the neck, head and bill of a stork. It is known as the night-scented pelargonium in English, kaneeltjie, pypkaneel or rooiwortel in Afrikaans and wit n/eitjie in the Khoi language.
Description
The night-scented pelargonium is a geophyte, usually about , exceptionally up to high, that loses all above ground parts when it enters dormancy during the dry, hot summer. It lacks spines. From the subterranean rootstock emerge tuberous roots. The stems are hard and woody at their base and succulent towards their tip, initially green but eventually brown, and rough due to the scars left by discarded stipules and petioles. It is up to long and thick. The leaves in the basal rosette look somewhat like those of a carot and are at least twice as long as wide, long and wide, on a petiole of up to long. These leaves may be upright or lay down. They are herbaceous, variably covered in short glandular hairs between short, whitish hairs. The rosette leaves are pinnately divided, the segments itself mostly further pinnately divided or incised in linear leaflets or lobes, up to four times in total. The highest order leaflets are usually about 1 mm wide, but up to 8 mm wide in less divided leaves. The base of the segments is wedge-shaped or narrow into a stalk while the tips are rounded or squared-off, the margins entire and rolled upwards. The stipules are heart-shaped or oval with pointy tips, long and wide, thin and pliable becoming dry, and initially densely pubescent on the underside.
The flowers are with 6 to 15 together in an umbel-like cluster on top of a sturdy unbranched peduncle of long and maximally in diameter. The part of the stalk of the individual flowers that contains the hollow, spur-like hypanthium is long, much longer than the remainder of the pedicel at its base that is up to long. The pedicel is densely set with straight, perpendicular (or strigose) hairs and with glandular hairs. The five sepals are long and wide, narrowly oval in shape with pointy tips, the outside densely strigose and some glandular hairs, the inside hairless, the margins with a row of hairs (or ciliate), dull green to yellowish green in colour and sometimes with russet coloured and slightly transparent margins. The five petals are almost equal in size and spade-shape with rounded tips, long, pale yellow in colour but often adorned with a vague or intense burgundy to purplish black blotch that may leave only the outer margin yellow. The posterior two petals are wide, strongly curved backwards at their base and somewhat curved forwards at their tip. The anterior three petals are wide and less markedly reflexed. Four long and three short filaments initially carry anthers (best determined in a bud), three filaments are sterile. The pollen is bright yellow in colour. The pale green, pear-shaped ovary is long and about wide, densely covered in hairs pointing to the tip. It is topped by a long style, that branches into five, reddish, curved stigmas. Like in all Geraniaceae, the fruit is reminiscent of the head and bill of a stork. It is schizocarp and consists of five units or mericarps. At the base of each mericarp is the enclosed seed that is long in the night-scented pelargonium, and a tail of long. The mericarps of Pelargonium are light and carry feather-like hairs to act like parachutes when dry and enable distribution by the wind. The awns of the mericarps coil when drying and uncoil when getting moist. These motions screw the seeds into the ground and in crevices.