• flowers,  Plants,  quotes

    Columbine

     

    Wild Columbine
    Wild Columbine

    While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. 

    Dorothea Lange

  • Plants,  quotes

    Wild Columbine

     

    Wild Colmubine
    Wild Columbine

    “One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” Maya Angelou

    The above image of a Wild Columbine was taken at Blendon Woods Garden near the visitors information building. This beautiful woodland wildflower has showy, drooping, bell-like flowers equipped with distinctly backward-pointing tubes, similar to the garden Columbines. These tubes, or spurs, contain nectar that attracts long-tongued insects especially adapted for reaching the sweet secretion. European Columbine (A. vulgaris), with blue, violet, pink, or white short-spurred flowers, was introduced from Europe and has now become well established in many parts of the East. It is different from its cousin, the Colorado Blue Columbine, which I am familiar with in that it droops downward while the Colorado Blue Columbine  tips upward. It is a beautiful flower.