Alternate name: Rocky Mountain Columbine

Family: Ranunculaceae, Buttercup view all from this family

Description Several stems and many divided leaves form bush plants with beautiful white and blue flowers that tip upward at ends of stems.
Flowers: 2-3" (5-7.5 cm) wide; sepals 5, spreading, lanceolate, petal-like, pale to sky blue; petals 5, shaped like sugar scoops, generally paler than sepals or even white, extending into backward-projecting spurs 1 1/4-2" (3.1-5 cm) long; stamens many and styles, 5 protruding from center of flower.
Leaves: repeatedly divided into leaflets 1/2-1 1/4" (1.3-3.1 cm) long, about as wide, deeply cleft and lobed.
Height: to 3' (90 cm).

Flower June-August.

Habitat Mountains, commonly in aspen groves.

Range Western Montana to northern Arizona and northern New Mexico.

Discussion Colorado's state flower. Popular in cultivation, with several color phases and "doubled" flowers. Hybridization with other species has produced further cultivated variants. Phases in the wild with pale or white sepals are frequent. A species with blue sepals and white petal tips, but only 2-8" (5-20 cm) tall, is Alpine Blue Columbine (A. saximontana), whose blue spurs are hooked at the tip; it grows high in the Colorado mountains.