AQUILEGIA. 
For this jewel has only been once or twice sighted, and then only in 
mossy rocks high on the slope of one mountain in Corsica, whence 
surely some devoted gardener will seekus seed. A. Intardiert is a quite 
minute, low clump-forming species, a weak little tuffet whose small 
and dainty leaf-lobules rather suggest those of a solider Isopyrum 
thalictroeides. These leaves are all springing from the many root- 
stocks that make the clump; the naked stem rises well above them, 
not more than 5 inches high, and the bright blue flower, large indeed 
for the plant, has a special beauty of its own. For here the out- 
standing petals of the cup and the wide-spread sepals of the star are 
of exactly the same length, with the result that the broad bloom has 
the look of a perfectly balanced and graceful rosette. Whereas in all 
other Columbines the sepals are more or less longer than the petals, 
or the petals than the sepals—thus diverting towards different beauties 
in either direction, like the Pagoda and the Dagaba ; but only here is 
the precise and perfect mean achieved. I need hardly say that on 
any collector who touches the roots of a rare Columbine the curses of 
the world will hang (no less than those of the Columbine, which is 
nearly certain to die, and has already offered to buy off his rapacity 
with seed, if he will only wait); but on him who touches the last 
remaining tufts of A. Litardieri, if any such exist, hang curses of quite 
especial vehemence and weight and heat. 
A. lutea, from Bulgaria, is a short-spurred species with yellow 
flowers. 
A. nevadensis, from the hill-woods of Granada, is like a hook- 
spurred, pale-blue A. vulgaris, with styles and stamens sticking well 
out of the flower. 
A. nivalis is reported a small and special beauty. 
A. olympica, which is also A. Wittmanniana of gardens (and also 
probably A. Oitonis), is a tall handsome species from the Levant, in the 
kindred of A. vulgaris, but rather viscid with glands, and with larger 
leaf-lobes, and larger flowers of blue and white or pale blue, rather 
waxy, and with spurs incurved, indeed, but not knobbed. This 
Columbine, as I have had it, comes true from seed of its own, though 
its potency is very evident in the offspring of its neighbours. 
A. oreophila carries us back into the dreamlands of hope. It should 
be a beautiful American species, not more than 8 inches high at the 
most, with blossoms cream-coloured and blue. 
A. Ottonis. See A. olympica. 
A. oxysepala, from Northern Asia, is a close cousin of A. glandulosa, 
but far more vigorous, attaining 2 feet, very free-flowering and very 
early, one of the best of all, large-flowered, with pointed wide stars 
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