Aquilegia viridiflora ‘Chocolate Soldier’ (Green Columbine)

Aquilegia viridiflora ‘Chocolate Soldier’ (Green Columbine) is a compact perennial boasting small, nodding, sweetly fragrant, chocolate flowers with short straight spurs and a bouquet of bright chartreuse stamens. The flowers rise in delicate clusters above the lovely foliage mound of lobed, divided, blue-green leaves. The foliage remains handsome throughout summer, provided the soil is kept moist. Blooming in late spring to early summer, this perennial is generally short-lived but may self-seed in the landscape in satisfactory growing conditions.

• Grows in a bushy, upright clump, up to 12 in. tall and wide (30 cm).
• Performs best in full sun to part shade, in fertile, moist, but well-drained soils. Intolerant to dry soils. Prefers deep, rich, moist soils with light to moderate shade.
• Attracts hummingbirds and butterflies, but is ignored by rabbits and deer!
• Easy to grow, this plant is a welcomed addition to beds and borders, city gardens, cottage gardens, underplanting shrubs, and roses or naturalized areas.
• Subject to fungal diseases, borers, leaf miners, and aphids.
• Remove flowering stems after bloom to promote new blooms.
• Cut back foliage affected by fungal diseases.
• Propagate by seed sown in pots in a cold frame as soon as the seed is ripe or in spring. It can also be propagated by division in spring, but the plant will be slow to recover.
• Native to China, Japan, and Russia.

Aquilegia is a genus of clump-forming, short-lived perennials noted for their late spring to midsummer blooms of single or double, short-spurred or spurless flowers, in a variety of colors ranging from blue to violet to white to pink to red. A classic element of herbaceous borders, Columbines mix beautifully with peonies, irises, alliums, and roses.