By Bill Ward
Published in The Boerne Star on March 11, 2003
President Eisenhower chose the name “Columbine” for his presidential plane when I was an undergraduate at “The University” (that meant UT-Austin in those days). I knew columbine must be a flower, but had no idea what it looked like. I thought it surely had to be something that grew in Colorado, the state Ike seemed to admire so much when they were choosing the location for the Air Force Academy.
Over 40 years later I finally saw a columbine at the Cibolo Nature Center’s spring plant sale and learned that it is a Texas native. Not long after that, I “discovered” it in the wild when I was studying rocks in some limestone canyons in Kendall County.
It is a good-looking little plant. It has showy red and yellow blooms and multi-lobed leaves. At first, I thought the leaves hanging off the moist rock walls were maidenhair fern.
My wife and I were happy to find columbines available in nurseries in both red- and yellow-blooming varieties. She is partial to the yellow ones. Columbines of any color are good garden plants.
The red columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) is the Operation NICE! (Natives Instead of Common Exotics) plant for March. In Texas this species is indigenous to the Edwards Plateau and the southern edge of north Central Texas. It also grows throughout the eastern US to Canada. For yellow-flowered species (A. chaplinei, A. hinckleyana, A. longissima, and A. chrysantha) are native to Trans-Pecos Texas.
The fact that the wild red columbine is found on the sheer walls and large boulders in limestone canyons of this area suggests several things about its preferred growing conditions. It must need good drainage, it prefers shade or dappled shade, and it will thrive in calcareous soils.
Pioneer wildflower-advocate Carroll Abbott used to encourage gardeners to use columbine as a year-round border plant in shady areas. Red columbine is almost evergreen, gets upt to about 18 inches high, and blooms from March to May. Hummingbirds are attracted to the flowers.
Deer will browse columbine in the garden. I wonder if the reason most wild red columbine is found on steep limestone bluffs and canyon walls is because those places are protected from deer browsing. Were red columbine more widespread before the Hill Country deer population exploded? I can’t find any mention of Aquilegia or anything similar in mid-19th Century reports by Lindheimer or Roemer. Perhaps the Edwards Plateau columbine was never widespread across the landscape and even then was hidden away in rocky canyons.
The Boerne Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas provides planting and care instructions for the columbine at the nurseries participating in Operation NICE! Nurseries that generously continue to support the program are Barkley’s Nursery Center, Hill Country African Violets and Nursery, Maldonado Landscape and Nursery, and Where Wild Things Grow Native-Plant Nursery.
