Leaf
Mathieu Menand, Tela Botanica · CC BY-SA 2.0
Water avens
Geum rivale L.
Also known as: Purple avens
Family: Rosaceae
20 to 45 cm tall
Banks, damp gardens, cool, rich soils
Flowering: May – July
Part shade
Shade
Hardy to -25°C
❓ How do you recognise this plant?
Its nodding bell-shaped flowers, a mix of pink and brown, set it apart from upright-flowered avens such as wood avens. The nodding flower, often orange-pink to brownish, and the damp habitat are good clues for telling it from G. urbanum, whose flowers are yellow and upright.
🍃 Leaves
In a rosette, compound, bright green, slightly hairy
🌸 Flowers
Nodding orange-pink bells with a brown-purple centre
🍎 Fruits
Achenes topped with a long hooked style
🪵 Bark
Perennial herbaceous plant, with slender, often nodding flowering stems.
🗺️ Distribution
Europe, temperate Asia; damp meadows and stream banks, rather in the northern half of France and in the mountains.
🐝 Value for pollinators
Nodding brown-pink flowers visited by bumblebees, the species' main effective pollinators.
✂️ Horticultural uses
Damp borders, pond margins, naturalistic gardens; many garden hybrids with wood avens.
⚠️ Possible toxicity
No known toxicity.
⚠️ Look-alike species
Water avens
Geum rivale
Wood avens
Geum urbanum
The nodding flower, often orange-pink to brownish, and the damp habitat are good clues for telling it from G. urbanum, whose flowers are yellow and upright.
🌿 Other Rosaceae to discover
ℹ️ Educational profile — do not use it to judge whether a plant is edible or safe.
🌱 This database is constantly evolving — species and information are added and corrected regularly. Spotted a mistake? Report it below.
© Floraneo — profile content is protected; reproduction without permission is prohibited. Photos remain under their own licence (see the credit shown on each photo).