YELLOW COLUMBINE 

 Aquilegia flavescens 8. Wats. 



CROWFOOT FAMILY 



"One sometimes seems to discover a familiar wild flower anew bi/ 

 upon it in some peculiar and striking situation. Our columbine is at all times 

 and in all places one of the most exquisitely beautiful of flowers: yet one 

 spring day, when I saw it growing out of a small seam on the face of a great 

 lichen-covered wall or rock, where no soil or mould was visible, a jet of 

 foliage and color shooting out of a black line on the face of a perpendicular 

 mountain wall and rising up like a tiny fountain, its drops turning to flame- 

 colored jewels that hung and danced in the air against the gray rock if sur- 

 face, its beauty became something magical and audacious." 



John Burrouglis. 



Mr. Burroughs, in the fine descriptive passage quoted above, 

 refers to the Wild Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) with gay 

 scarlet and yellow flowers, the common species in Eastern Canada, 

 but with its western range limited, perhaps, to Manitoba. Our 

 illustration is of the Yellow Columbine, found chiefly in the 

 mountains and foothills. The sepals of this nodding flower 

 are spreading and wing-like, sometimes pale yellow, but frequen- 

 tly flushed more or less with crimson. The cream-colored petals 

 are concave and spurred, five horns of honey in a circle, from the 

 centre of which projects a cluster of yellow stamens. Very grace- 

 ful in form and foliage, as well as dainty in coloring, is this 

 Yellow Columbine. 



Among the foothills, and extending its range eastward in 

 open woods and meadows, grows the Small-flowered Columbine. 

 The neat little flowers of this species have blue sepals, white 

 short-spurred petals and short stamens which do not form a pro- 

 jecting tassel as in the Yellow Columbine. 



The spurs of these quaint anl lovely blossoms contain nectar 

 that can be reached only by long-tongued bees or by butterfies, 

 who pay for the feast by carrying pollen from flower to flower. 

 Sometimes, however, one may find a columbine in which some 

 insect, unable to reach the nectar in a legitimate way, has ciitcn 

 or bored a hole in the bottom of the spur. Such back-entrance 

 robbery is not confined to the columbine. Other plants also suffer 

 from it occasionally, but usually the designs of insect marauders 

 are frustrated by a sticky flower stem, a brisly calyx, a bitter 

 juice in the tissue of the corolla, or by some other device. 



50 



