Aquilegia Columbine Blue

The classical spurred granny's bonnet: nodding flowers in white with soft powder-blue spurs, on fine stems above light green divided foliage. This is the original form, grown in British gardens for four hundred years, and the shape the Barlow doubles were bred away from.

The five spurs arranged in a ring are what gave the plant its common name. Columba is Latin for dove, and the old herbalists thought the flower looked like a circle of doves drinking together. Once you have seen it you cannot unsee it.

It is a plant for dappled shade under deciduous trees and at a woodland edge, hardy to anything a British winter offers, and it cuts well; the nodding heads bring a looseness to a spring vase that stiffer flowers cannot. Be realistic about the season though. It flowers in May and June and that is the whole of it, and by late July the foliage looks tired and often mildewed. Cut it to the ground and it makes a fresh rosette. Aquilegias cross freely with anything nearby, so seedlings will be their own thing rather than this one.