I'd love to trade for some of this! I have some daylily seeds, and will soon have purple phlox and lavender datura. And I have cuttings from Rose of Sharon 'Blue Bird' and a NOID double dark rose-pink.

Thank you Ken, for the enlightenment - I read or was told, sometime ago that collecting seeds for sowing or allowing Columbines (Aquiligia) to re-seed will most likely produce inferior plants ... didn't know they may revert to original species. You might be right ... could also revert to the wild ( tinier blossomed ones). I had a year when they grew like weeds all over & even in the most unlikely cracks & crannies & mostly purple! I ended up taking all the bloom stems down (dead-heading would have been pain!) & allowed only the pinks to seed some. These past few years I'm discovering different shades of purples, pinks & light mauves also finding very teeny-tiny blossoms (quite adorable!). I planted *Songbird Goldfinch* seeds turned black before I could collect & plant never returned! BTW also read that *Alpine Blue* is the most hardy/dominant & great seeder!

Aren't those (mostly) hybrids rather than species columbines? If they are, they are not likely to breed true from seed, but rather to revert to an ancestral type.

Flower color changes can be triggered by very small changes in soil pH and/or the the absence of metal ions in the soil. Metal ions are necessary to cement the color determining pigments together. Light and temperature can also affect colors, but usually only to the extent that colors are more or less vibrant. Columbines are noticeably susceptible to soil pH. I have a blue one that appeared in my garden several years ago and seedlings from it, just 5 ft. away are pink/salmon colored. You might experiment with changing the soil pH slightly, by adding small amounts of lime (alkaline) or aluminum sulfate (acidic), and see if the original yellow color returns. Rb