176 THE PLANT WOKLD 



himis of Dodonaeus, Caesalpinus and other writers, is made tlie equiva- 

 lent of " Geranium columhinum " of Tabernaemontanus and Gerarde, 

 and the " Geraniain inalvacearum sivehalsammma" of Camerarius. It 

 was a geranium with deeply divided leaves, the dove's-foot cranesbill of 

 English authors. Bauhin, however, gives Columhina as a synonym of 

 Aquilegia, referring it to the wild or wood columbine of Europe, called 

 by him ^^ Aquilegia sylvestris,'' a plant with simple, blue or purplish 

 flowers, plainly the Aquilegia vulgaris L. 



The word e^ddently came into the English through the Romanic 

 languages, being in use in Italian and French, with several meanings as 

 noun or adjective, besides its application to the plant. One of these was 

 dove-colored, harmonizing with a common use by Latin authors, espe- 

 cially by Pliny, The color referred particularly to the dove's neck, and 

 in this sense was also applied to the plant. In Hatzfeldt and Darme- 

 steter's General Dictionary of the French Language, colombin is given 

 as a word derived from the Latin columbinus, with the definition, " Old 

 adjective; having the color of a dove's neck." A still older form is 

 columhain. In Italian it became colombino. 



The popular name of Aquilegia in French is ancolie, but among 

 others for Aquilegia vulgaris, at least, is colombine, the spelling, as in 

 Italian, conforming more closely to that of the Romance tongues. In 

 Baillon's Dictionaire de Botanigue we have " Colomhina, name of the 

 ancolie at the time of the Renaissance," There is no reference to a 

 definite writer of the Renaissance period, but the name is carried back to 

 that epoch in the form employed by Caesalpinus and Bauhin. Con- 

 firmatory of this is a remark of Fabius Columna, in his account of 

 Aquilegia, to the effect that columhina was used by the " neoferici,'' or 

 modern writers, as a name of " Aquilegia sylvestris." This occurs in his 

 " Phytobasanos," or "History of some Ancient Plants," which was pub- 

 lished at Naples, 1592.* Skeat (Etymological Dictionary of the Eng- 

 lish Language) refers to Wright's Vocabulary for the English form of 

 the word : " Columhina, low Latin, a columbyne," and to Cotgreve's 

 French and English Dictionary (London, 1660) : " Old French, colom- 

 bin, the herbe colombine," and also with the meaning " dove-colored." 

 The oldest reference in Murray's New English Dictionary on Historical 

 Principals, is dated 1310, in a quotation from an edition of Lyric Poems, 

 edited by Wright, with the same spelling as now used. It thus appeared 

 in English during the period of Middle English, presumably from the 

 French, and with this application to the plant Aquilegia or Gohmibine. 



In view of such interpretations and uses of the word by Italian, 



*I quote from the edition of Planeo, Milan, 1744, in which Aquilegia sylveslris, 

 so-called by Columna, is the first plant figured and described, with a reference ; " C. 

 P. B., (Caspar Bauhin's Pinax), p. 144." 



