
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. 
te A This charming plant grows from one to 
Aquilégia truncata OVEt three feet high, is 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 aninchlong. 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 
yeresRR EO white sister of the large Blue Columbine, 
leniicara which is the “State flower’ of Colorado, 
White and sometimes sufficiently tinged with 
Summer blue to show the relationship. It is a 
Northwest and 
- 9 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. . 
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