Description

Aquilegia – Columbine

There are around 70 species of graceful clump forming perennials, in this genus.  They occur from meadows, open woodlands, and mountainous areas in Europe, North America, and temperate regions of Asia.  Columbine comes from the Latin word for dove, as the flowers were thought to resemble a cluster of doves.  They produce basal rosettes of long stalked deeply 3-lobed or ternate to 3 ternate often blue-green or blue-gray fern like leaves the leaflets are mostly egg shape or rounded wedge shaped at the bases often shallowly or deeply divided into 2 or 3 lobes.  In late spring and early summer distinctively spurred bell shaped flowers usually 1-4” long with colorful tepals and spurred petals are carried singly or in short panicles on branching leafy stems.

These frost hardy plants prefer moist but well-drained light soil enriched with manure in full sun or partial shade.  Grow alpine species in gritty, humus-rich, and moist but sharply drained soil in full sun.   Protect from strong winds and in hot areas provide some shade.

Contact with sap may irritate skin.  Some used as cut flowers or in rock gardens.

Prone to powdery mildew, rust in dry summers, fungal leaf spots, Ascochyta and Septoria, Southern blight, aphids, leaf miners, and damage from caterpillars.

Aquilegia Formosa – Western Columbine – This airy perennial from California, Montana and Utah grows 24-36” tall and 18” wide.  It produces 2 ternate blue-green leaves with deeply divided fern like leaflets ¾-1 ½” long.  In late spring and early summer axillary and terminal leafy racemes of pendent flowers appear.  They have wide-spreading orange sepal and yellow petals with red lobes and upright reddish orange spurs ½-3/4” long with protruding stamens.

Zones 4-8