COLUMBINE (Aquilegia vulgaris). "There's fennel for you, and columbines," says Ophelia, as she hands the flowers to the courtiers.[46] Shakespeare also mentions the columbine in "Love's Labour's Lost"[47] where Don Armado, the "fantastical Spaniard" (a caricature of a real person at Queen Elizabeth's court), exclaims, "I am that flower," to which Dumain and Longueville reply in derision, "That mint! That columbine!" Of the columbine of Shakespeare's time, Parkinson says:

"There be many sorts of Columbines as well differing in form as color of the flowers, and of them, both single and double, carefully nursed up in our gardens for the delight both of their forms and colors. The variety of the colors of these flowers are very much, for some are wholly white, some of a blue, or violet, color, others of a bluish, or flesh, color, or deep, or pale, red, or of a dead purple, or dead murrey color, as Nature listeth to show."

The generic name is derived from the word aquila, an eagle, because of the fancied resemblance of some parts of the flower to the talons of an eagle. The English name comes from the Latin columba, a dove, from the likeness of its nectaries to the heads of doves in a ring around a dish, or to the figure of a dove hovering with expanded wings discovered by pulling off one petal with its detached sepals. Hence this was called the dove plant. From the belief that it was the favorite plant of the lion it was called Herba leonis.

The columbine was valued for many medicinal virtues.

"The scarlet and yellow columbine," writes Matthew, "is one of our most beautiful wild flowers. It is my experience that certain flowers have certain favorite haunts, which are exclusively held by them year after year. This flower is in its prime about the first of June, and is nearly always found beside some lichen-covered rock."

The English and American flowers differ, although the early colonists brought the English flower with them. Grant Allen tells us:

"The English columbine is a more developed type than the American scarlet, is never yellow in the wild state, but often purple, and, sometimes, blue. Larkspur, ranking still higher in the floral scale, in virtue of its singular bilateral blossoms, is usually blue, though it sometimes reverts to reddish-purple, or white; while monkshood, the very top of the tree on this line of development, is usually deep ultramarine, only a few species being prettily variegated with pale blue and white. As a rule, blue flowers are the very highest; and the reason seems to lie in the strange fact, first discovered by Sir John Lubbock, that bees are fonder of blue than of any other color. Still, they are fond enough even of red; and one may be sure that the change from yellow to scarlet in the petals of the American columbine is due in one way or another to the selective tastes and preferences of the higher insects."

The colors of the American columbine are dark opaque blues, smoky purples, dull pinks, pale blues, lavenders, reds and yellows—an infinite variety!

"The flowering of the 'Columbine Commendable,' as Skelton called it four hundred years ago," says Harriet L. Keeler, "marks the beginning of summer. The reign of the bulbs is over;

the petals of the early roses are falling; the elder-blossoms show white along the fence rows; and the season waxes to its prime.

"A wild flower of English fields, the columbine was early transferred into English gardens and has held its place securely there for at least five hundred years. Its seeds were among the treasures borne over the sea to the New World and it early bloomed in Pilgrim gardens. This primitive stock still persists in cultivation.

"The flower of the columbine is a unique and interesting form. The sepals look like petals and the petals are veritable horns of plenty filled with nectar at the closed ends for the swarms of bees which gather about. The sweets are produced by the blossoms on a generous scale, and to a columbine bed in full bloom the bees come, big and little, noisy and silent—all giddy with the feast. There is no use trying to drive them away for they will not go. Clumsy bumble bees with tongues long enough to reach the honey by the open door, wise honey bees who have learned to take the short road to the nectar by biting through the spur, quiet brown bees, little green carpenters—all are there, 'vehement, voluble, velvety,' in a glorious riot of happiness and honey.

"The doubling occurs chiefly with the petals; the sepals, as a rule, hold true to the five, but the petals sometimes double in number, becoming ten spurs in place of five, and each spur becomes a nest of spurs like a set of Chinese cups, though the innermost are frequently imperfect."

The columbine frequently appears in the paintings of the Great Masters. Luini has immortalized it in his picture of this title now in the gallery of the Hermitage at Petrograd. A fascinating woman with a smile as enchanting—if not so famous—as Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" holds an exquisitely painted columbine in her left hand and gazes at it with tender, loving emotion.

The early Italian and Flemish painters include the columbine with the rose, lily, pink, violet, strawberry, and clover in the gardens where the Madonna sits with the Holy Child. The reason that the columbine was chosen as a flower of religious symbolism was because of the little doves formed by the five petals. The columbine signified the "Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit," and the Flemish painters in their zeal for accuracy corrected the number of petals to seven to make the flower agree with the teaching of the Church.

Yet although the columbine has these religious associations, we always think of it as an airy, piquant flower, the gay and irresponsible dancer of the rocks and dells, clad, as it were, in fantastic and parti-colored dress. Graceful in form and charming in color, put together with extreme delicacy on slender, flexible, fragile stems and adorned with a leaf approaching that of the fern in delicacy and lace-like beauty, the columbine is one of the most delightful of flowers. Always associated with folly, we love it none the less for that, for there are times when we enjoy Harlequin and Columbine among our flowers,—and these fantastic and frivolous columbines dancing so gaily in the breeze always fill us with delight.

BROOM (Cytisus scoparius). Although the broom was a popular plant in Elizabethan days it is only mentioned once by Shakespeare. In "The Tempest,"[48] where Iris in the mask in her apostrophe to "Ceres, most bounteous lady," speaks of

When in blossom the broom is lovely to look upon. The large yellow flowers are gracefully arranged on the branches, and its perfume is delightful.

"Sweet is the Broome-flower!" exclaims Spenser. The broom is the Planta genesta, from which the Plantagenets took their name. The flower, having become heraldic during that dynasty, was embroidered on the clothes of the Plantagenet family and imitated in their jewels. When they died it was carved on their monuments. The story goes that Geoffrey, Earl of Anjou, father of Henry II of England, once on his way to a field of battle, had to climb a rocky path, and he noticed as he went along the bushes of yellow broom clinging to the rocks. Breaking off a branch he, placed it in his helmet with the words: "This golden plant shall be my emblem henceforth. Rooted firmly among rocks and upholding that which is ready to fall." His son, Henry, was called "the royal sprig of Genesta." The golden plume of broom-flowers was worn by the Plantagenets until the last one of the line, Richard III, lost the Crown of England to Henry VII, the first of the Tudors.

In 1264 the Planta genesta was honored by St. Louis, who instituted the Order of Genest on his marriage with Marguerite. The Knights of the Genest wore chains made of the broom-flower alternating with the fleur-de-lis. Shakespeare speaks of a "broom-staff" and sends Puck

Whether Puck's broom was made from the Genesta or not we do not know; but we do know that the broom, in common with other briars, was used to make besoms for sweeping and also for staffs to walk with and to lean upon.

Summer