Aquilegia vulgarisL.

common columbine

WFO wfo-0000541607 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Aquilegia vulgaris, photographed by Ian Manning
fig. a Ian Manning, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205633997
Aquilegia vulgaris, photographed by Mattia Menchetti
fig. b Mattia Menchetti, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204836155
Aquilegia vulgaris, photographed by gill_ryenats
fig. c gill_ryenats, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204095376
Aquilegia vulgaris, photographed by Liubov Ilminska
fig. d Liubov Ilminska, CC0 1.0 / obs. 204966210
Aquilegia vulgaris, photographed by Rafael Medina
fig. e Rafael Medina, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205976449
Aquilegia vulgaris, photographed by marbib
fig. f marbib, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205703089
Aquilegia vulgaris, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. g Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 203607966

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 7,506 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 7,506 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 82 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Aquilegia alba Huftelen
  • Aquilegia arbascensis Timb.-Lagr.
  • Aquilegia bertolonii var. parviflora Huter, Porta & Rigo
  • Aquilegia collina Jord.
  • Aquilegia corniculata Vill.
  • Aquilegia cornuta Gilib.
  • Aquilegia cyclophylla Jeanb. & Timb.-Lagr.
  • Aquilegia dumeticola Jord.
  • Aquilegia ebneri Zimm.
  • Aquilegia ecalcarata Steud.
  • Aquilegia eynensis Brühl
  • Aquilegia glaucescens Baker
  • Aquilegia glaucophylla Steud.
  • Aquilegia huteri Borbás
  • Aquilegia inversa Mill.
  • Aquilegia longisepala Zimmeter
  • Aquilegia mollis Jeanb. ex Timb.-Lagr.
  • Aquilegia nemoralis Jord.
  • Aquilegia nigricans var. ebneri (Zimmeter) Beck
  • Aquilegia nivea Baumg. ex Baker
  • Aquilegia ochroleuca Baumg. ex Schur
  • Aquilegia platysepala Rchb.
  • Aquilegia plena hort. ex Steud.
  • Aquilegia praecox Jord.

and 58 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.