Herewith our first Columbine to mark the day (yesterday), when our plants migrated from basement and sunroom back out into the wilds of our backyard. A while back I discovered the merits of domestic recordkeeping, thus using a private blog. Such records are easily indexed and therefore forgotten things are rapidly retrieved. I can therefore now report that our plants went indoors on November 11 and spent six months in Egyptian exile as it were—well just six days shy of six months.
I discovered something wonderful about this plant today. It belongs to the genus
Aquilegia, derived from the Latin for “eagle” but is known as Columbine, derived from the Latin for “dove.” (Well, all right all of you dyed-in-the-wool democrats. A pigeon.) These two names—and I have a third as well, but let it be hidden for the moment—derive from different aspects of the flower. The
Aquilegia all have what are known as spurred petals, thus petals with a spike, and that formation reminded those who did the naming of eagles’ claws. The small inset, with thanks to Wikipedia (
link) shows those spurs—the up-pointing green things. Calling this plant a dove probably comes from the beauty of the flower when it is open, as shown above. The third name no doubt comes from the way the flowers look when they’re just resting: Granny’s Bonnet.
