I am very much interested to know the name (and the correct cultivation) of this flower. I believe the plant may have gotten into my flowerbed by way of a flower seed mixture for shady areas. The seed package is long gone, Im afraid. Many thanks for any help you can give me! The leaves are basically three-sided (slightly clover-like in appearance) and slightly scalloped, and they grow as a group of three per stem. (In my scan, the middle leaf seems to be missing from the middle of the three sets of leaves.) The plant grows only about a foot high and is not dense or bushy at all. In other words, the leaf stems are relatively few in number. I have two of these plants that have pink blooms and one that has purple blooms. The blooms are frilly cups that hang downward from the stem, like a bell. They are about an inch, or a little bit smaller, across. After blooming, the plant creates erect seed pods, which dry and become quite full of seeds that resemble larkspur seedsthat is, hard and black and easily visible.
You have some species or cultivar of columbine (Aquilegia) of the family Ranunculaceae. The flowers are complicated as the petals are long-spurred. An exact identification in this way might be impossible even if you had flowers to show. Several indigenous species occur ion North America. Some of them and the European A. vulgaris are cultivated as ornamentals, as are numerous hybrids and cultivars. Cheers Harri Harmaja http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/harmaja/index.htm
Flowers in shades of pink and purple would be consistent with Aquilegia vulgaris, a commonly grown species.
