I think columbine flowers are gorgeous and the leaves are pretty, too.
The flowers have five petals and five sepals in decorator color contrasts. The sepals are ovate and the petals are fused into conical shapes. The plants have three lobed leaves, grouped in threes themselves. They favor dappled shade habitats. The stamens and pistils shoot far out beyond the petals, with the numerous stamens grouped like a bouquet around five (?) pistils. In some samples, the pistils were clearly taller (see straight stalks in fuzzy photo), but in others I could not see them within the crowd of stamens.The anthers look like they have vertical dehiscence, but that could be the natural division between the two compartments. I could not tell anything about the interior of the ovary, but I think I sort of smashed it! Seeds are encased in a skinny follicle that ejects the flat, shiny black seeds when it splits open along one suture.
I L O V E Columbine flowers! I would like to go to Colorado someday and see the mountaintop fields of Columbine flowers that I’ve heard people insist are real.