2i6 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



richly-cut foliage, the gaily-coloured and quaintly-formed 

 flowers, or the equally quaint form of its ring of fruits, 

 pod-like individually, but clustering together into a most 

 picturesque aggregation. The columbine flowers about 

 midsummer, but, continuing in bloom for a considerable 

 time, we get, as we have depicted, flower and fruit 

 simultaneously ; the fruiting stage being reached while 

 there are many flowers open or opening, and others 

 only yet in the promise of the bud. Wc have in our 

 illustration given the leaf in its Autumnal garb ; 

 during the flowering season it is of a dark bluish-green 

 colour. 



It will be seen, by a glance at the lower blossom in 

 our illustration, or, better yet, by an inspection of a living 

 flower, that the blossom is singularly like a group of little 

 clustering birds, hence its name columbine, columba mean- 

 ing in Latin a dove. It is botanically the Aquilegia vulgaris. 

 The old writers also, amongst other names, call the plant 

 jiquileia, Aquilina, and Columbina. Some one centuries ago 

 thought that the clustering forms that suggest to others 

 the heads of doves were no less suggestive of the claws 

 of an eagle, in Latin, Aquila, but the name is by no means 

 so happy as the popular title. Some mediaeval folk of a 

 botanico-astrological turn of mind called our plant the Herba 

 leonis, " the herbe wherein the lion doth delight," the 

 reference of course being not to the lion of the African 

 desert but to his confrere in the Zodiac, and to the time 

 of flowering of the plant. 



In its wild state, dwelling in woods and coppices, and 

 on the railway banks, the columbine flower is of deep rich 

 purple colour, but it is a plant that lends itself to consider- 



