60 ENGLISH BOTANY. 
SPECIES L—AQUILEGIA VULGARIS. Linz. 
Puate XLVI.* 
Reich. Ic. Fl. Germ. et. Helv. Vol. TV. Lan. Tab. CXIV. Fig. 4729. 
Petals with the spurs hooked at the apex. Stamens a little 
longer than the petals. Leaves biternate, with the leaflets 3-lobed, 
crenate. 
In woods, copses, and on banks, especially on a calcareous soil. 
Reported from many of the English and a few of the Scotch coun- 
ties, but probably introduced in many of these localities. I have 
seen it in chalky copses in Kent and Surrey in places where there 
could be no doubt of its being truly indigenous. Dr. Bromfield 
considered it also truly native in the Isle of Wight; Mr. H. C. 
Watson in Cumberland, and Mr. Gutch in Annandale, Dumfries- 
shire. I have likewise found it in several places in Scotland, as 
far north as Clackmannanshire, but only where it has originally been 
planted, or escaped from cultivation. 
England, Scotland, Ireland. Perennial. Summer. 
Rootstock thick and fleshy, brownish black, generally branched. 
Stem erect, 18 inches to 3 feet high, one only produced from each 
branch or head of the rootstock, clothed at the base with the 
fibrous remains of decayed leaf-stalks, slightly branched in the 
upper portion. Radical leaves numerous, stalked, with the base 
of the stalks dilated, biternate, the secondary leaflets about as broad 
as long, irregularly 3-lobed, the lobes with a few large crenatures ; 
stem leaves few, on much shorter stalks ; the uppermost ones or 
bracts quite sessile, with 3 narrow lobes. Flowers terminating the 
stem and branches, arranged in an irregular corymbose cyme ; 
flower drooping or pendulous, 14 to 2 inches in diameter, generally 
blue in the truly native plant, but occasionally white, reddish, or 
purple, in which cases it may be suspected to be of garden origin. 
Sepals lanceolate-ovate, acute, similar in texture and colour to the 
petals. Limb of the petal oblong-truncate, nearly as long as the 
tubular spur, the extremity of which is sharply curved. Inner 
sterile filaments much broader than the external fertile ones, white, 
with the edges elegantly crimped. Anthers yellow. Styles longer 
than the anthers. Carpels with short hairs, cylindrical, tipped by 
* The Plate, E. B. 297, required so much correction, that Mr. J. E. Sowerby has 
made a new drawing for the present edition. This drawing is chiefly from the old 
Plate, but with the various inaccuracies avoided,and the fruit added from dried Kentish 
specimens, 
