A FEW OLD FAVORITES 125 



There are thirty or more species of the genus 

 Aquilegia, or columbine, and examples of one or 

 two of the more common ones are perhaps to be 

 found in your garden. At least you can get 

 seeds from which to gi'ow them of almost any 

 seedsman. 



The columbines have long attracted my atten- 

 tion because of their numerous species, and their 

 wide range of color variation; also because of 

 the curious shape of the flower and the tendency 

 of the spurs to vary greatly in length, as well as 

 in their tendency to open out in some cases, and 

 in others to remain partially closed. There is, 

 indeed, one old cultivated variety which has lost 

 the spurs altogether. 



Long ago I carried on some interesting ex- 

 periments with this spurless kind of columbine, 

 crossing it with many others, especially with one 

 known as the ccerulea, which has very large 

 flowers of beautiful shades of blue. The hybrids 

 of this spurless form with the other species pro- 

 duced beautiful large flat clematislike flowers, 

 some of them three or four inches in diameter. 



Perhaps the most interesting feature of the 

 experiment was that the hybrids were entirely 

 spurless. This shows that the condition of spur- 

 lessness, which is an anomaly presumably of 

 recent origin, inasmuch as the spurs are a char- 



