Scarlet Columbine
Aquilègia truncàta
Red and yellow
Spring
Wash., Oreg., Cal.
This charming plant grows from one to over three feet high, is branching and smooth, and has pretty light-green leaves and nodding flowers, which are over an inch and a half across. The outside of the corolla is pale-scarlet, veined and tipped with yellow, the inside is yellow and the spurs are erect and three quarters of an inch long. The flower resembles the Scarlet Columbine of the East, but the plant is taller, with fewer flowers. It is common in moist, rich woods in Yosemite and the Coast Ranges, from the foothills well up to the alpine zone.
White Columbine
Aquilègia leptocèra
White
Summer
Northwest and Utah
An exceedingly beautiful flower, a white sister of the large Blue Columbine, which is the "State flower" of Colorado, and sometimes sufficiently tinged with blue to show the relationship. It is a rather slender plant, usually with several stems, from one to two feet tall, the foliage rather bluish-green, the flowers large and usually pure-white, and is found in the mountains.
Scarlet Columbine—Aquilegia truncata.
Monkshoods have almost as much charm as their cousins Columbine and Larkspur, with a quaintness and individuality all their own. There are a good many kinds; mountain plants, growing in temperate regions, with rather weak stems and leaves much like those of Larkspur. The blue and white blossoms have a "hood," which gives these plants their very appropriate name. This is formed by the upper and larger one of the five, petal-like sepals arching over and forming a hood, or helmet, under which the two small petals, with spurs and claws, are hidden; sometimes there are three or more petals below, which are minute and resemble stamens. The real stamens are numerous and ripen before the pistils, thus ensuring cross-pollination, and the fruit consists of a head, of from three to five, many-seeded pods. The thick or turnip-shaped root is used medicinally and is virulently poisonous, so these plants are sometimes called Wolfsbane. Aconite is the ancient Greek name and other common names are Blue-weed and Friar's-cap.
Monkshood
Aconìtum Columbiànum
Blue and white
Summer
West
This handsome perennial, from two to six feet tall, grows near streams, in mountain meadows or open woods. The flowers measure from half an inch to over an inch long and are mostly bright-blue and white, tinged with violet, but shade from almost white to deep-blue, veined with purple. They are paler inside and grow on slender pedicels, in a long loose cluster, on a somewhat bending stem. The two, small, hammer-shaped petals are nearly concealed under the hood. The leaves are alternate, the lower ones with long leaf-stalks, and deeply cleft into three or five, toothed or lobed, divisions. This reaches an altitude of twelve thousand feet.