^ The Scented garden gg 



Columbines in the mass have a faint, attractive, rather 

 peculiar perfume, but the only columbine which can be 

 described as scented is Aquilegia fragrans, a native of 

 Kashmir. It grows about 16 inches high, and has cream- 

 coloured flowers deliciously scented. A. fragrans has 

 attracted so much attention lately that it is interesting to 

 find this treasure was introduced for the first time into 

 England nearly a hundred years ago. It is exquisitely 

 figured in The Botanist (1840) with the following note : 

 ' This is a most valuable addition to a well-known orna- 

 mental European genus, furnished by the mountainous 

 chains of the north of India, a country analogous in 

 many of its vegetable productions to the alpine districts 

 of the south of Europe. With all the singularity of form 

 and elegant growth of our own columbines, this species 

 presents a colour of flower very unusual in the genus, and 

 exhales a fragrance so much a desideratum in those hither- 

 to cultivated. In its botanical affinities the plant comes 

 nearest to A. pubiflora of Wallich, but the flower is twice 

 as large, and the spurs of the petals very much more 

 hooked, besides which, pubiflora appears to have the 

 flowers of a rusty purple. The A. fragrans is one of a 

 number of North Indian plants raised by the Horti- 

 cultural Society of London, from seeds presented by the 

 Honourable East India Company. It has only flowered 

 this spring (1840) for the first time, and has been hitherto 

 kept in a conservatory or under a frame, but there is every 

 reason to hope that it will prove as hardy as its congeners 

 already in cultivation.' 



Grown in quantities, columbines make a wonderful 

 display of varied colour and it is curious that they are 

 not more commonly potted up for indoor decoration, as 

 90 



