COLUMBINES 



'ir^HE Columbine is a very old English flower; 

 JL indeed, Aquilegia vulgaris, the common colum- 

 bine, with short-spurred flowers of a dull blue or pur- 

 ple colour, grows wild in parts of England, and may 

 be indigenous. This common columbine has always 

 been a favourite with painters, because of its beauty 

 of form. There are columbines in Titian's "Bacchus 

 and Ariadne," and Diirer drew them with obvious 

 delight. They are a favourite flower in Italian em- 

 broideries; and Parkinson, in the seventeenth cen- 

 tury says that there are many sorts, "as well differing 

 in form as colour of the flowers, and of them both 

 single and double carefully noursed up in our gardens 

 for the delight both of their forme and colours." Some, 

 he says, "are wholly white, some of a blue or violet 

 colour, others of a blush or flesh colour, or deep or 

 pale red, or of a dead purple, or dead murrey colour, 

 as nature listeth to shew itself." Among the double 

 columbines, some he says, are "party-coloured blue 

 and white and spotted very variably." He enumerates 

 five varieties, one being the common single columbine 

 and the others merely double forms of it. One of 

 them, which he calls the rose or star columbine, and 

 which has no spurs at all, but all its petals arranged 



"like unto a small thick double rose laid open or a 



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