"Our English jacinth, or harebells," writes Parkinson, "is so common everywhere that it scarce needeth any description. It beareth divers long narrow green leaves, not standing upright, not yet fully lying on the ground, among which springeth up the stalk, bearing at the top many long and hollow flowers, hanging down their heads, all forwards, for the most part, parted at the brims into six parts, turning up their points a little again, of a sweetish, but heady, scent, like unto the Grapeflower. The heads for seed are long and square, wherein is much black seed. The color of the flowers is in some of a deep blue tending to purple, in others of a paler blue, or of a bleak blue tending to an ash color. Some are pure white and some are parti-colored blue and white; and some are of a fine delayed purplish red, or bluish color, which some call a pearl color." [Illustration: AN ELIZABETHAN MANOR HOUSE; HADDON HALL] VI _Columbine and Broom-flower_ COLUMBINE (_Aquilegia vulgaris_). "There's fennel for you, and columbines," says _Ophelia_, as she hands the flowers to the courtiers.[46] Shakespeare also mentions the columbine in "Love's Labour's Lost"[47] where _Don Armado_, the "fantastical Spaniard" (a caricature of a real person at Queen Elizabeth's court), exclaims, "I am that flower," to which _Dumain_ and _Longueville_ reply in derision, "That mint! That columbine!" Of the columbine of Shakespeare's time, Parkinson says: [46] "Hamlet"; Act IV, Scene V. [47] Act V, Scene II. "There be many sorts of Columbines as well differing in form as color of the flowers, and of them, both single and double, carefully nursed up in our gardens for the delight both of their forms and colors. The variety of the colors of these flowers are very much, for some are wholly white, some of a blue, or violet, color, others of a bluish, or flesh, color, or deep, or pale, red, or of a dead purple, or dead murrey color, as Nature listeth to show." The generic name is derived from the word _aquila_, an eagle, because of the fancied resemblance of some parts of the flower to the talons of an eagle. The English name comes from the Latin _columba_, a dove, from the likeness of its nectaries to the heads of doves in a ring around a dish, or to the figure of a dove hovering with expanded wings discovered by pulling off one petal with its detached sepals. Hence this was called the dove plant. From the belief that it was the favorite plant of the lion it was called _Herba leonis_. The columbine was valued for many medicinal virtues. "The scarlet and yellow columbine," writes Matthew, "is one of our most beautiful wild flowers. It is my experience that certain flowers have certain favorite haunts, which are exclusively held by them year after year. This flower is in its prime about the first of June, and is nearly always found beside some lichen-covered rock."