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A Couple of Columbines

© Gregg Pasterick

Several months' back, in the last of my articles reflecting on a Season of California Wildflowers, I wrote about the many treasures I encountered on Mt. Dana, in Yosemite National Park. Many flowers were species I was hoping to find there; others were a complete surprise. One species - Coville's Columbine (Aquilegia pubescens) - was something I had found in a field guide months and months earlier, and was immediately smitten with. It was right at the top of that list of wildflowers I hoped to find on Mt. Dana.

Also known as Sierra Columbine, this typically delicate species looks more like a garden hybrid than a wildflower, resembling Colorado Columbine (Aquilegia coerulea) in form. Its flowers however, are entirely white, pale-yellow, or yellow. I found it growing in moist soil among the rocks above the timberline. It was chilly and breezy up there, but the columbine seemed happy. (I, on the other hand, was less than pleased. The film advance thingie in the camera with the color film stopped functioning, so I had to shoot it in black and white, which was not what I had in mind at all.)

It is native to the Sierra Nevadas, and though it is found at higher elevations, it does well when it turns up in gardens at lower elevations. Unlike most wildflowers that grow at such high elevations, Coville's Columbine is not a ground hugger, but can get as tall as two feet. Its large flowers also seem to scoff at the smaller wildflowers typical of high elevations.

Thanks to the Hawkmoth, which is the sole pollinator of Crimson Columbine (Aquilegia formosa), Coville's Columbine sometimes gets cross-pollinated with Crimson Columbine. Occasionally a hawkmoth dusted with the pollen of the smaller red and yellow species will nectar in the larger, pale flowers, which results in hybrids ranging in color from creamy-white to yellow, pink, or lavender.

Coville's Columbine is also pollinated by hummingbirds.

A similar columbine, the yellow-flowered Golden Columbine (Aquilegia chrysantha) revealed itself to me a couple months later at Zion National Park, in southwestern Utah. My wife and I were moving from Long Beach, CA. to Boulder, CO., and stopped to spend a couple days there. It was late September, and I didn't expect much in the way of wildflowers, but lo and behold, mountainside seeps were wet and lush and green and not without a fair share of wildflowers, one of which was ... yes ... Golden Columbine (and always frustratingly beyond my reach; i.e. I couldn't photograph it.)

Coville's Columbine

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