Re: weather

In a message dated 05/13/2004 6:25:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
mhobertm@excite.com writes:

> Yesterday I discovered a new (for my garden)color of columbine growing
> behind some other plants...a beautiful lavender color. All my others are
> peachy-orange colored. A kindly bird must have seeded it there...I'm so
> happy...I just love this plant. I bought a deeper purple one last week
> and it is doing well. Now if I could just find a pink one somewhere, I'd
> be real happy! 

Melody, let them reseed for a while and you'll probably have a pink one too.  
The new lavender one is probably a hybrid or a throw-back.  Many years ago I 
had a lovely double upfacing columbine from Parks called Fairy something.  
They haven't offered it for years and I've never seen it anywhere else.  I still 
have a couple of plants of it, but it has hybridized with the native A. 
canadensis and I have dozens of different colors and sizes and shapes.  Each year I 
let them bloom and the ones I don't like - muddy colors, too tall, or 
whatever, I pull out before they go to seed.  I know it's not a very neat way to 
garden, but I love seeing what comes.   It seems to me that the ultimate color most 
columbines revert to is a rather dull dark blue.  Did you know that the 
long-spurred columbines all have North American native genes?  The European 
columbines have short, hooked spurs.  Most that are offered commercially are hybrids 
between the two, but High Country Gardens offers an absolutely stunning yellow 
long-spurred native.  
Auralie

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