BUTTERCUP FAMILY. Ranunculaceae. 



The picturesque Columbine gets its melodious name 

 from the Latin for "dove," because the spurs suggest a 

 circle of pretty little pigeons, and this common name is 

 less far-fetched than the Latin one, Aquilegia, which comes 

 from a fancied resemblance of the spurs to an eagle's claws. 

 These plants are well known and easily recognized by the 

 peculiar shape of the flowers. Everything about them is 

 decorative and beautiful, the foliage is pretty and the 

 flowers large, brightly colored, and conspicuous. They 

 are all perennials, with branching stems and compound 

 leaves; the flowers usually nodding, with five sepals all 

 alike and resembling petals, and five petals, also all alike, 

 with conspicuous, hollow spurs. The stamens, the inner 

 ones without anthers, are numerous and the five pistils 

 develop into a head of five, erect, many-seeded pods. 

 There is honey in the spurs, which can be reached only 

 by ' ' long-tongued ' ' insects or humming birds, which thus 

 assist in cross-pollination, and bees obviate the difficulty 

 of having short tongues by ingeniously cutting holes in- 

 the spurs. There are a good many beautiful kinds, both 

 East and West. 



This charming plant grows from one to 

 Scarlet Columbine ; 5 . ? 



Aquilegia trunchta over three feet hl g h 1S branching and 

 Red and yellow smooth, and has pretty light-green leaves 

 Spring and nodding flowers, which are over an 



Wash., Oreg., Cal. inch and a half across< The outside of 



the corolla is pale-scarlet, veined and tipped with yellow, 

 the inside . is yellow and the spurs are erect and three 

 quarters of an inch long. The flower resembles the Scarlet 

 Columbine of the East, but the plant is taller, with fewer 

 flowers. It is common in moist, rich woods in Yosemite 

 and the Coast Ranges, from the foothills well up to the 

 alpine zone. 



An exceedingly beautiful flower, a 



white sister of the large Blue Columbine 

 which is the "State flower" of Colorado, 



White and sometimes sufficiently tinged with 



Summer blue to show the relationship. It is a 



rather slender plant, usually with several 

 stems, from one to two feet tall, the 



foliage rather bluish-green, the flowers large and usually 



pure-white, and is found in the mountains. 

 134 



