As simple as my instructions were to the many second and
third-grade children I led on nature hikes to learn about and
enjoy wildflowers, they accomplished my objective very well.
I told the students that some people in past years must have
been the first ones to come up with the common names of
wildflowers. My suggestion was, "Supposing that you were
the very first person to name the wildflowers today, what would
your choices be?"
My goal was to lead the children to take closer looks at the
plants, their shapes, colors, foliage, etc., and many came up
with surprisingly good names. The Dutchman’s breeches, for
example, often became the tooth flower.
If you were to correctly associate the following colloquial
names from elsewhere of a wildflower presently in bloom, could
you do it? They are: honeysuckle, meeting house, lion’s herb and
rock bells. The answer is – the wild columbine.
Obviously it is the airy grace and ornamental poise that may
have led to some of its unusual nicknames. Its strikingly long
nectar spurs surely attract equally long-tongued moths and
hummingbirds, but the flower is not in the honeysuckle family,
it’s in the buttercup family.
Its title of "meeting house" may have arisen from
the five arched nectar spurs on the columbine flower appearing
like five people huddled together in a meeting. The Latin word,
"columbinus," meaning dove-like, also reflects five
doves in a ring around a dish.
"Lion’s herb" stems from a legend claiming that
lions ate columbine flowers in spring to gain extra strength.
The habit of these showy wildflowers to grow in rocky
environments, especially where limestone is abundant, led to the
name of "rock bells."
There are about 20 native species of columbines in the U.S.
and Canada. One, Aquilegia coerulea, a gorgeous blue and
white species, is the native flower of Colorado. The species
native to Wisconsin is Aquilegia canadensis, having the
typical intricately shaped downward-facing blossoms, red on the
outside and yellow on the inside.
It’s the genus name of Aquilegia, pronounced
ah-qwi-LEE-gee-ah, that inspires some interesting interpretation.
I’ve already mentioned the dove-like resemblance and its story.
Another rendition is that the nectar spurs appear like the talons
of an eagle (aquila in Latin). Still another scholar claims the
name is derived from "aqua," meaning water, and
"legere," to collect. Personally I prefer the dove
interpretation and so do the children and adults to whom I have
told the s tory while admiring this showy flower.
Out west, where columbine species are so commonly associated
with rocky environments, they are quite often called rock lilies.
All too often our eastern columbine is erroneously referred to as
a wild honeysuckle, apparently because of its nectar tubes which,
in the good old days, children, and adults posing as children,
snipped off the blossoms I order to relish the minute amount of
sweet nectar.
The fact that the sepals are the same color as the petals
means that one must study them closely in order to separate the
two. Divided leaves of the columbine, feathery to the eye, have
lobes with rounded teeth and are pale beneath. They turn from a
light green during flowering to an attractive pink or rose color
as they age.
One of the toughest perennial flowers that one can have in a
flower bed is the rather weedy blue to purple Aquilegia
vulgaris from Europe, which I simply refer to as the European
columbine. This introduced flower has escaped from cultivation
throughout much of the East. Its blossoms, not nearly as
graceful as our native columbine, are about an inch wide and an
inch long, and their stamens do not protrude from the flower as
elegantly as do those of ours.
The cluster of dangling stamens protruding downward from our
columbine blossoms resembles a yellow tassel. Conceivably one
blossom might be looked at as a bell with the dangling yellow
stamens being the miniature clappers.
After the petals have fallen, the seedpod, now minus the
weight of the five petals, turns upward to ripen.
The seeds will be firmly contained within the long, slender,
five-lobed, urn-like seed pods, in this case called follicles.
When ripe the seeds will be very tiny, black and shiny.
The hardy, dazzling wild columbine, which appears to grow
equally well in sun-baked, thin gravely soil along the shoulders
of roads and in moist shady forests, surely ranks with the most
easily recognized and well-loved of all North American
wildflowers.
The wild columbine surely ranks with the most
easily-recognized and well-loved of all North American wildflowers.
This column appeared in the Door County Advocate
on 06/21/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.
