Showing posts with label Columbine Flowers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Columbine Flowers. Show all posts

Saturday 14 March 2015

Columbine or Aquilegia Flowers



The flowers and leaves of columbines have a dainty, airy quality. Several of flowers have long spurs, and they come in every color, including bicolor in which the inner row of petals is one color, the outer petals (sepals) and the spurs another. Heights also vary. Most bloom in mind to late spring. Aquilegia Canadensis “Common Columbine” is yellow and red and grows one or two feet. A caerulea (Colorado or Rocky Mountain columbine) is blue and white and grows up to three feet tall. Both are Native American wild flowers. A chrysantha is yellow, two to three feet. A vulgaris is shades of blue and rose and grows up to three feet. A flabel lata (Japanese fan columbine) is as short as six inches although sometimes as tall as 1 ½ feet with bluish leaves; available varieties are usually white or blue and white. In addition there’re many hybrids; “McKana” and “Dragon Fly” hybrids in mixed shades are medium height; “Biedermeier” strain are mixed and shorter. “Snow Queen” is white; “Crimson Star” is red; “Maxi Star” is yellow. In general the species are Zone four, while the bybrids Zone Five. 

How to Grow Columbine or Aquilegia

Columbines normally do well in either full sun or part shade. They only transplant well when small, and are sometimes short lived, but have a strong tendency to self-sow, and volunteer seedlings can be moved to the desired location. All need well drained soil. Leaf miners, which make white tunnels in the leaves, do considerable harm in some gardens, but when the tunnels are merely unsightly they’re best ignored.