AQUILEGIA. 
of blue sepals, and a clear yellow cup of petals. It has a name for 
seeding true, yet is but rarely seen. 
A. pyrenaica is a most important charmer which brings us on to 
debatable land strewn with the corpses of botanists dead in mutual 
war over its varieties and sub-species. First of all, for the sake of 
clearness, let us see A. pyrenaica itself. This is, to speak roughly, a 
miniature of great A. alpina, about half the size, but far more refined. 
The leaves are small and neat, springing round the base, compara- 
tively few and lacy; the stems stand up nearly naked, to the height 
of about a foot, and the plant is almost wholly smooth, except that 
the upper part of the stalk tends to be sticky, and that there is fine 
down on the outside of the petals and sepals, which are evenly balanced 
against each other, though not precisely so qs in A. Litardiert. The 
flowers are large and royally handsome, of a richer, deeper blue than 
those of A. alpina, with a gorgeously contrasting central tassel of gold. 
The genuine typical A. pyrenaica is only met with in the Pyrenees ; 
but all along the Southern chains of the Alps there stretches a string 
of forms and sub-species which are cruelly difficult to disentangle and 
have bred endless confusion, different botanists having given the same 
names at different times to different varieties. With these it would 
not be necessary here to cope, but that several of them are often 
offered as species; while, in the mountains themselves, it is satis- 
factory to get some idea of what Columbine one is seeing. Therefore 
I will follow the lead of Paoli and Fioretti, drastic though it be, in 
treating all these forms (sub-species though some of them may be, if not 
actually true species) as members of the aggregate A. pyrenaica—of 
which, let it be remembered, they all have the same general con- 
figuration : more or less the same habit, more or less the big and lovely 
dark-blue flower, invariably glorified by its central fluff of golden 
stamens. A. Bertolonii, Schott, ranges from the Pyrenees to the 
Herzegovina. It has large blossoms, rich blue, downy outside, and 
with a fine fringe of hairs to the flower-segments. The spur is large, 
imcurved and hooked; the lobes of the root-leaves long and rather 
pointed, standing well away from each other; and the leaves them- 
selves are almost entirely smooth, hairless and downless and glandless. 
A. Kitaibelii, on the contrary, has downy foliage, densely downy at the 
base. The flower is no less fine and ample, but here the spur is bald, 
only a little curved, and rather shorter than the blade of the petal it 
belongs to, the blade again being a trifle shorter than the expanded 
ray of the sepal. A. Kitaibelii may be found in the Dolomite district, 
as for instance near Agordo, and so forth. A. Hinseleana is a plant 
downy at the base, but perfectly smooth above; the petals are rather 
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