138 THE SHAKESPEARE GARDEN 



also mentions the columbine in "Love's Labour *s 

 Lost" 1 where Don Armado, the "fantastical Span- 

 iard" (a caricature of a real person at Queen Eliza- 

 beth's court), exclaims, "I am that flower," to which 

 Dumain and Longueville reply in derision, "That 

 mint! That columbine!" Of the columbine of 

 Shakespeare's time, Parkinson says : 



"There be many sorts of Columbines as well 

 differing in form as color of the flowers, and of them, 

 both single and double, carefully nursed up in our 

 gardens for the delight both of their forms and 

 colors. The variety of the colors of these flowers 

 are very much, for some are wholly white, some of a 

 blue, or violet, color, others of a bluish, or flesh, 

 color, or deep, or pale, red, or of a dead purple, or 

 dead murrey color, as Nature listeth to show." 



The generic name is derived from the word aquila, 

 an eagle, because of the fancied resemblance of some 

 parts of the flower to the talons of an eagle. The 

 English name comes from the Latin columba, a dove, 

 from the likeness of its nectaries to the heads of 

 doves in a ring around a dish, or to the figure of a 

 dove hovering with expanded wings discovered by 

 pulling off one petal with its detached sepals. Hence 

 this was called the dove plant. From the belief that 



1 Act V, Scene II. 



