COLUMBINES 
COLUMBINES 
Natural Order Ranunculageas. Genus Aquilegia 
Aquilegia (Latin, aquila, an eagle). Erect perennial herbs distributed 
over the north temperate zone; species generally considered numerous, but 
reduced by Sir Joseph Hooker to five or six. Leaves alternate, twice or 
thrice divided. Stems leafy, branched, 1 to 4 feet. Flowers solitary or 
panicled; stamens maturing before pistils. Sepals, five, coloured, petal¬ 
like. Petals, five, curved in front and extended backward as hollow spurs 
in which honey is secreted. Stamens numerous; carpels, five, with many 
ovules. In cultivation the flowers occur double, and in some of these the . 
spurs are suppressed, when the flower has a flat, starry appearance. 
mgto The genus furnishes a large number of the most 
18 17 graceful and showy plants for the hardy garden, and yet 
they may be said to be quite modem as garden flowers. Some of them, 
it is true, are merely cultivated forms of our native Columbine (A. 
vulgaris), and this and A. canadensis were practically the only two 
known to gardeners a hundred years ago, although two others had lately 
been introduced to England. A. canadensis came from North America as 
far back as the year 1640, A. alpina from Switzerland in 1731, and 
A. viridiflora from Siberia in 1780. The others came during the present 
century, the popular A. chryscmtha so recently as twenty-three years ago. 
A large number of the garden Aquilegias are hybrids between some of 
these species. There is probably no group of plants that are so difficult 
to keep distinct in a garden; they hybridise so freely without the 
gardener’s aid. It is almost impossible to get seedlings true unless the 
parent plant has been kept in a kind of quarantine by covering it with 
muslin during the flowering period. For our present purpose we shall 
ignore Hooker’s reduction of the genus, and speak of the sorts by the 
names they commonly pass under. 
Aquilegia vulgaris (common). The Common Columbine, 
cp pe es -2 to 3 feet. This is the species most frequent in gardens. Its 
flowers are normally purplish blue, but they vary from dark blue to dull 
red, and to white. The spurs are curved inwardly, hooked and knobbed at 
the extremity. It flowers from April to October, though the principal dis¬ 
play is overby July. The principal varieties of vulgaris are the following:— 
forms. I straight. 
Ccerulea, nana, deep blue, double, of dwarf Vervaneana, leaves mottled with yellow. 
habit. Wittmanniana, like hybrida, but finer 
JTybrida, sepals lilac-purple, short, broad | flowers, very large, spur curved. 
