PAYSON—NORTH AMERICAN AQUILEGIA. 135 
United States National Museum for the loan of the extensive col- 
lections of western United States and Mexican material in the 
National Herbarium, which, with the specimens in the Rocky 
Mountain Herbarium, the herbarium of the Missouri Botanical 
Garden, and the private collection of Mr. Marcus E. Jones, of Salt 
Lake City, have served as the main basis of the work. The material 
of the last mentioned collection was especially valuable on account 
of Mr. Jones’s field knowledge of western Aquilegias and from the 
fact that his collections were made principally in regions where the 
particularly interesting forms occur. Other valuable collections 
studied were those of the Washington State College, Washington 
State Museum, Colorado State Agricultural College, and Nevada 
State Agricultural College, as well as that of Mr. George Osterhout, 
Windsor, Colo. 
The accompanying illustrations were prepared by the author. 
CHARACTERS OF GENUS AND SECTIONS. 
AQUILEGIA L. CoLUMBINE. 
Stems usually several, terminating the branches of the thick caudex, erect, 10 to 
120 em. high (in A. jonesit almost entirely lacking); basal leaves tufted, biternate, 
triternate, or occasionally in some alpine species simply ternate; petioles generally 
long, dilated and sheathing at base; cauline leaves relatively few, diminishing in 
size and degree of complexity upward; involucral bracts often entire; leaflets obovate, 
cuneate, or suborbicular, 1 to 5 cm. long, irregularly 2 or 3-lobed, the lobes from entire 
to 5-cleft, usually rounded, glabrous or rarely pubescent, glaucous or glaucescent 
beneath; flowers nodding in the bud, erect or nodding in anthesis; sepals 5, attached 
to the torus by a short, narrow claw, the blades from narrowly lanceolate and acumi- 
nate to broadly oblong and obtuse; petals! composed of two parts, the lamina, an 
expanded petal-like structure alternating with the sepals, and the spur, a hollow 
prolongation of the base of the lamina bearing at its apex the nectar-secreting gland; 
laminz from spatulate and well developed to almost entirely obsolete; spurs short and 
hooked to long and straight; stamens numerous, 2.5 cm. long or less, in most cases 
exceeding the sepals; anthers yellow, about 1 mm. long, adnate; ovaries usually 5, 
surrounded by a sheath of membranous, flattened staminodia, erect, usually pubes- 
cent and glandular; styles filiform, 3 to 18 mm. long; fruits erect, follicular, the suture 
being on the inner side, 1 to 2 cm. long, the tips more or less spreading. 
In a consideration of the internal relationships and the development of Aquilegia 
the question presents itself, what should be considered primitive and less speci- 
alized and what recent and more specialized characters. The characters we have 
to concern ourselves about here relate to: 
1. The stem. The few-flowered stem of medium height with few branches is con- 
sidered the most primitive stem of modern species, and the low, single-flowered stem 
of certain alpine species as well as the very tall, much-branched, many-flowered stems 
of some southern representatives are held to be derived forms. 
1 This name is retained for these structures for convenience only, since it seems prob- 
able that they are greatly modified nectar-secreting staminodia instead of true 
perianth segments. For a complete discussion of this point see Prantl, in Engl. & 
Prantl, Pflanzenfam. 37: 49. 1888. 
