16 FLOWERS OF THE WOODS AND COPSES 
Accustomed as we are to this plant in the garden we know its tall, 
graceful habit, with large, drooping, blue flowers in a raceme or group, 
and leafy stem below. In habit it resembles Meadow Rue, but differs 
from it and all other flowers of the Buttercup group in many particulars. 
The inbent hollow bottom of the petal in the corolla gave it the 
name Aquilegia, in allusion to the incurved talons of an eagle’s claws. 
Columbine, again, refers to the flower’s shape, like a dove’s nest. The 
flat part of the petal of the flower is blunt and shorter than the 
stamens. The five sepals are petaloid. There are five follicles, which 
are erect, open above. The seeds are black and shining, minutely 
granular. 
This plant is often 2 ft. high or even 3 ft. It is in flower from 
May to July and is perennial. 
The five petals are large and conspicuous, each one hollowed 
from the claw upwards, to form a hollow spur or horn-shaped cavity, 
15-22 mm. long, with a cup-like mouth, admitting a humble bee’s 
head, and the narrow tubular part is curved inwards and downwards 
above, containing the honey secreted by a fleshy thickening in the 
spur. Bees with a long proboscis hold on to the flower below, 
clutching hold of the base of the spur with their fore legs, and with 
their mid and hind legs they clasp the stamens and pistil, which project 
obliquely downwards in the. middle. They introduce the head into 
the aperture of the spur where the outer wall touches the end of 
the proboscis following the curve of the spur. In younger flowers the 
hind part of the bee’s body touches the anthers, closely surrounding 
the carpels covered outside with pollen, and in older flowers the 
same parts touch the carpels which have become elongate, and spread 
the stigmas farther apart. So cross-pollination follows. 
The. visitors are Lombus hortorum, B. terrestris, B. agrorum, 
Hlalictus. B. terrestris cannot reach the honey and bites a hole at 
the base of the spur in order to obtain it. Holes may frequently be 
seen and are due to this cause. 
The Columbine is adapted to wind dispersal, the numerous seeds 
being shaken out of the follicle, open above, when the latter is ripe. 
It is a rock plant, choosing a rock soil, which may be granitic, 
schistose, or even a sand rock with some humus. 
Ecidium aguilegie is a cluster-cup fungus which lives on this 
plant. The moths, Gray Chi, Potia cht, Anistoma ulmaria, Small 
Ranunculus, /Yecatera dysodea, Pterophorus cosmodactylus, the Homop- 
teron, A/yalopteris trirhoda, and the fly, Phytomyza aguilegie, fre- 
quent it. 
