This must be one of my favorite finds to date. We have wild columbine, or red columbine, in abundance all over the Hills, but blue columbine, aquilegia brevistyla, is one I’ve never had the delight of finding. We hiked Hell Canyon this afternoon (one of my favorite hikes to date), and this little gem was growing prolifically in the canyon itself. My wonderful, handy field guide, Plants of the Black Hills and Bear Lodge Mountains, states, “Blue columbine….is much less common than [wild columbine, aquilegia canadensis] and is never abundant where it is found.” Well. Today it was abundant.
I had never seen one before and sort of figured I was unlikely to ever see one, but I can now put a check mark next to its entry in my field guide, and revel in the pleasure of a rare find.
Song Dog Journal 
It does. That’s job security for the botanists.
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Isn’t it a thrill to find something as pretty as that! I love the blues!
The differences between there and here are interesting. There are red columbines in Montana but not in my local area, but we do have yellow. I wonder how all of those different distributions came about.
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It sure is!! Always fun to find a new flower!
The differences are very interesting – You just posted the Idaho Blue-Eyed Grass. Here we have Mountain Blue-Eyed Grass, and from your pictures I can tell that yours really is slightly different. And then add to that the local names, and it gets really confusing!
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