Aquilegia fragrans explained

Aquilegia fragrans, the fragrant columbine or sweet-scented columbine, is a perennial species of flowering plant in the family Ranunculaceae, native to the Western Himalayas.

Description

Aquilegia fragrans grows to in height. The rootstock is slender with the upper part covered by previous years' leaf-stalks. The stems are branched and densely hairy with glands below the flowers. The basal leaves are biternate with long hairy stalks. Its leaflets are wedge- or teardrop-shaped, paler and hairy beneath, green and usually hairless above, with two or three lobes. The flowers are horizontal or slightly nodding with whitish or pale purple sepals measuring in length. The petals are usually paler than the sepals and long, with straight or slightly curved nectar spurs measuring .

Taxonomy

The species is part of a clade containing several Western, Southern and Central Asian species of columbine, that likely split from their closest relatives in Eurasia in the mid-Pliocene, approximately 3.37 million years ago.

Etymology

The specific epithet fragrans means "fragrant" in Latin.

Distribution and habitat

This species is native to subalpine meadows in the Western Himalayas at altitudes of . It is present in the Kunar, Nuristan, Laghman, Nangarhar, and Parwan provinces of Afghanistan, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir regions of Pakistan, and the Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, and Uttarakhand states and Jammu and Kashmir union territory of India.

Ecology

Aquilegia fragrans flowers from June to August.

Conservation

The species has not been assessed for the IUCN Red List.