Is this a Columbine? I didn't think I had any purple in that mixed-color-pkt!
To my novice eye, the leaves look like Columbines. For now I'm calling them "Purple Nod-Head" mystery flowers.

There is one small set of buds, almost ready to open, on stalks about 20-24" tall (very few leaves up there). Then, down 5-7" above soil level, there is a dense bunch of leaves and lots of younger buds.

I know I set out some of these 'McKana's Giant' two years ago, but I don 't remember young blooms "nodding" like this. And they were all very light pastel in color.

Columbine 'McKana's Giant' Blend Aquilegea - hybrida
Botanical Interests Item #1007
http://www.botanicalinterests....

If they are Columbines but not 'McKana's Giant' , they might have come from a traded pkt that I don 't remember having sown yet.

They certainly look like Columbines to me! They look a lot like the ones growing in my front yard, which are also purple. But they were here when we moved here, so I have no idea what they are.

It looks like European Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris) or a similar species. Hybrid columbines like McKana's Giant often produce offspring that are reversions to more of a wild type, so that's one possiblilty. I'm not sure which species were used create the McKana's Giant cultivar, but A vulgaris is commonly used in breeding programs.

Also, many species of columbine freely interbreed with each other so, if there are other columbines growing in your neighborhood or if the person who sent you seeds had more than one, your purple flowers could be the result of a mixture of any number of species.

Thanks, both of you. If this is a first-year plant, it could be an F2 seed that some bird dropped here.

I went hunting through my notes and confirmed that I planted "hardly any" Columbines going back to 2011.

I finally found a note that I HAD sown a NO ID " Dk Blue/Purple " Columbine from Deejay9 in her Round Robin. I didn't think any of them sprouted because I remember seeing NO purple blooms there.

If that is what they are, great! I may even cut the surviving 'McKana's Giants' so this dark purple one doesn't get cross-pollinated.

Can you propagate A. vulgaris by dividing the root ball?

That could very well be Aquilegia vulgaris, and I've emailed her to ask if this looks like anything she put in that Round Robin.

I've only ever grown columbine from seed (want some Dwarf columbine seeds?), but apparently you CAN divide them when dormant. Not sure I'd try it, tho.

Ahh, thank you. "when dormant".

>> Not sure I'd try it, tho.

Hmm, I'll let it grow for a few more years an d collect some seed first.

I'm still puzzled that it som ehow got from seed trays in my bedroom into this raised bed (in 2011), yet I never saw it before now! Or maybe it was only leaves for the first year or two.

I suspect it must have gotten into that bed when I gave up on those rows in that tray, say around June 2010 an d threw the soil mix into that bed and raked it around. Some seeds have really funny stratification requirements!

Yup. Some Columbine seeds really want stratification. I collected a whole bunch of seeds off my dwarf, and never had any luck growing them till I stuck some in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

AS I know, Columbines have one major deep root much like a parsley.
I have no idea what the roots look like on mature plants as I never had to uproot one.
I only know the volunteers/seedlings.
I'm not sure columbines produce clumps that can be divided.
I'll have to check mine!

I had to lift a large root recently due to being surrounded by grass roots at the top which were impossible to get out, the tap root was very thick and long with several branched thick roots towards the top with crowns, much like several plants on one. You could try to remove one of the top branched crowns with as much root as possible, it should grow but I'm not sure how well.

If you grow a few different hybrids you can get an occasional exceptional plant, mine have crossed and set about with some very nice flowers. Often the original has disappeared but many self sets hang around.

Susie (Deejay9) days that mine doesn't look like hers, so the seeds probably weren't from her. Unless the seed child was unlike the parent.

Oh, well! Now I can't call it 'Susie's dark Purple Nod-Head'.

I hope it makes lots of seeds! And maybe I'll try rooting cuttings. I haven 't tried that in many years, since for me, "rooting" might as well be spelled "rotting".

From the sound of "deep taproot", I don't want to try dividing it any sooner than I have to.

Just snag seeds, Rick. MUCH safer! I get volunteers from several of my columbines, and so far none of them really look like a cross, although I have a number of different varieties. But they're not planted close together either.

Good idea. I kill enough plants without even trying, why should I plunge a spade right through their hearts?

I'd rather save that for my Dear Neighbor who just tried to get the park manager to give control of a bed in MY yard, on totally specious grounds. I stomped on that successfully!

She already got me to remove a bed I had created while the prior neighbor lived there - had to move every plan t AN D the soil I had made. That was fair - it WAS on her side of the sidewalk. I offered to share, or plant whatever she wanted there, and asked if she could wait until AFTER the Salvia etc had finished blooming, but no, "get rid of them all" was what she wanted. Fortunately, many did not die during transplant.

I took back every CRUMB of new soil that I had made, but neither jot nor tittle of her hard clay.
She killed everything else on her side, including a flowering azalea, and left a clay-and-weed-and-scrubby-grass wasteland.

grumble grumble bad-word grumble

The first two are part of the narrow bed I had to move.
The third is the curved wall of the beds on MY side of the sidewalk, from a few years ago.



After removing my lavatera, salvia, poppies, Zinnias, Dianthus and cosmos, her own floweirng azealea and some trees, here is what she has left:]




If she had let me keep it an other year, I could have made it like this far-left one.
The middle Mikado Poppy would have multiplied.
The six Lavatera would have settled in and become gorgeous, and screened our yards from each other.
She prefers dead clay & weeds.

She got the park to declare it was "her lamp post" even though it is in my yard, because all the lamposts in m y little bloc k are numbered "off-b y-one" for some historical reason. Anyway, she demanded it * got it.

So she "decorates" it. Last Halloween, she put up a plastic skeleton an d it never came down.
She re-dresses it for holidays, and here are Valentines Day and two versions of Easter.

You can't see them, but the balc k plastic rats and spiders from Halloween are still there.
I thought I was a little strange, but she is straaaaaange!

I really think she has some serious brain damage, besides her need to make trouble.

Awww, I think you should cultivate her. She obviously has a warped sense of humor buried in there somewhere.

Oh, Rick, other people's problems could be sooo funny sometimes...

>> Awww, I think you should cultivate her.

Yes, you are 100% right!
I would love to cultivate her.

First, with a steel rake and a hoe.
Then a mattock to break up the tough bits.
Then ... no, first ... I should have covered her with about 6" of manure.

I moved most of the plants this weekend, and sacrificed a few.
Even the towering, flowering Bok Choy seems to be surviving. Amazing how small her roots were, to have 6-foot-tall flowering spikes!

I was multiplying some sedum and creeping thyme there (Thymus serpyllum 'Elfin' and NO ID Sedum).
They were big enough that I could put up 2 big, shallow pots each, plus two raised micro-beds EACH. The raised micro-beds are barely one square foot each, but it let me save the soil I had made without spreading weed seeds and roots into all my other beds.

Besides those four big "chunks", I had some pieces left over and stuffed a narrow planter with more sedum & thyme. I want to use it as ground cover in several places, like trenches and walkways, after I get finish doing the "Corey Corps of Procrastinating Engineers" number on them.

PLUS I found one circular, tight-knit bunch of tiny-leaved things hardly larger than moss. I don;t know if that was lurking in the sedum and thyme I was given, something native to my neighborhood that I never saw before, o0r maybe "baby thyme" from a really dense drop of seeds or something.

Pictures soon, I hope.

Gee, sounds like you're ready to try your own version of hugelkultur? Just with a different type of rotting "logs?" Oops, maybe shouldn't be giving you ideas...........

Getting back to those Columbines, I know you have lots of seeds, but would you be interested in some of the dwarf Columbine seeds I have? I really like them; they make a nice little compact clump with pretty little lavender-blue and white flowers.

>> your own version of hugelkultur? Just with a different type of rotting "logs?"

Shhhh! M y compost heap is hungry enough as it is.

And I would really hope that, if I ever go that route, everyone I know will say "I can't believe Rick would do THAT! He seemed like such a nice boy."

Instead of "Yeah, it was only a matter of time."

In fact you reminded me of a buddy where I worked, several jobs ago He asked me, seemingly seriously, that if I ever came to work with a machete and Went Postal, would I please, as a favor, come for him last? So he would have time to run.

He sounded so serious!



"I have a little list ...
They never will be missed ..."

>> would you be interested in some of the dwarf Columbine seeds

I appreciate the offer, but this Spring has reminded me how FAR behind I am on all the many projects I'm in the middle of. I don't know if there are more than 50, or fewer than 50, seeds that I've been super-eager to try for more than one year, but haven't gotten around to them yet.

I think that whenever I get more seeds, the ones that have been waiting for a few years get jealous.

Ok. Just thought maybe your new Columbine might like a wee companion.

PS: turning her into compost would definitely be letting "the punishment fit the crime."