Aquilegia

Excellent and easy garden plants, with a variety of colours and forms to suit any open situation, although as they can be quite prolific, they will grow in part shade also. Cultivated forms will not always come true from seed, so watch out for seedlings arising near your original plant. With many differing species and forms available, this is matched by the plethora of common names, granny's bonnets, lion's herb, columbine, dove plant, cluckies, jack-in-trousers....  to name a few.

With a central tuft of stamens and five petals with long spurs that contain nectar, Aquilegias are especially valuable to long-tongued bumblebees. In those garden forms with more complicated doubled flowers the architecture of the flower may reduce the ability of insects to reach the nectar. Despite the presence of toxins as is common in most of the buttercup family, the leaves are eaten by a wide range of insects especially larvae of larger moths including dot moth, cabbage moth and mouse moth.