Alpine Columbine

Long before it reached lowland gardens, alpine columbine bloomed only above the treeline, in the thin cold air of the Alps, where its deep blue, nodding flowers became a small emblem of the high country. European gardeners prized it from at least the seventeenth century onward as one of the showiest plants they could coax out of an alpine trough, and it traveled into cottage gardens as a symbol of both delicacy and hidden strength, since so little else could survive where it grows wild. The genus name Aquilegia is thought to come from the Latin for eagle, a nod to the curved, talon-like spurs behind each bloom, while the older folk name columbine points to its resemblance to a ring of doves in flight. Unlike many of its herbal garden neighbors, alpine columbine was valued almost entirely for its beauty and its place in the mountain landscape rather than as a remedy, and that distinction still matters today.