LXXIL— THE COLUMBINE. 
Aquilegia vulgaris Linne. 
I N floral beauty and botanical interest alike no genus of the Ranunculaceit 
surpasses Aquilegia. 
A considerable degree of poetical imagination is evinced in the scientific and 
popular names borne by the group. Aquilegia.^ first used apparently by Tragus, 
alias Jerome Bock, in the sixteenth century, is said to be derived from a fancied 
resemblance ot the incurved nectariferous spurs of its petals to the claws of eagles, 
from the Latin aquila. Lobel and Pena who, in their “Adversaria” of 1570, first 
record it as a British plant, use the form Aquilina ; and the same notion is expressed 
in such popular names as Cock' s-foot and Hawk' s-feet. On the other hand, the 
undoubtedly ancient name Columbine., from the Latin columba, a dove, is based upon 
the very different notion that the petals of the flower if reversed resemble a nest of 
young doves, or, that if we pull off one petal with a sepal on each side of it we get 
the figure of a hovering dove with expanded wings. Such names as Cullavine, 
Cullanby, Curranbine, and Colourbine are, of course, mere phonetic corruptions of 
Columbine, with an attempt in the last at an etymological explanation. Culverwort 
would seem to be a sixteenth-century translation of Columbine, since, as Henry 
Lyte puts it in his “ Herball ” (1578), the flowers 
“ Do seeme to expresse the figure of a dove or culver.” 
The Gaelic Lus a cholamain has the same significance. It is strange, however, how 
universal comparisons between this flower and various bird forms seem to be ; for 
the Norfolk name Hen and Chickens is said to be derived “ from the resemblance of 
the spurs to chickens drinking.” The two related names Boots and Shoes and Lady's 
Slippers both belong to Cornwall ; whilst in French we have Gants de Notre Dame 
and in German Narrenkappe, i.e. fools’-caps. So many resemblances tempt one to 
refer to Hamlet’s cloud which resembled a camel, a weasel, and a whale ; but we 
have yet another in Clare’s lines : — 
“ The columbines, stone-blue, or deep night-brown, 
Their honeycomb-like blossoms hanging down. 
Each cottage garden’s fond adopted child, 
Though heaths still claim them, where they yet grow wild.” 
The genus consists of a considerable number of species of erect perennial 
herbaceous plants, natives of the North Temperate Zone, eight occurring in Europe ; 
but only one in the British Isles. Their leaves are bi-, or tri-, ternately compound ; 
and the large and conspicuously coloured flowers are borne either solitarily or, on 
slender drooping stalks, in a somewhat complex branch-system or panicle. A 
remarkable range of colour is presented in the flowers of the various species — white, 
light and dark true blue, violet, yellow, scarlet, pink, light or dark brown, the 
sepals and petals in some species being of two very distinct hues. The flowers also 
