'Adelaide Addison' Columbine

European Columbines have been grown in British gardens since at least the fourteenth century, and Gerard's 1597 description of the double variety still applies: "The flowers hereof be very double, that is to say, many of those little flowers (having the form of birds) are thrust one into the belly of another, some-times blew, often white, and otherwhiles of mixt colours, as nature list to plaie with hir little ones..." Both single and double forms were grown in America before 1700, and it is likely that Jefferson had this easy-to-grow perennial, since he included "Columbines" in an undated list of cultivated flowers. The Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon, listed "Double Columbines, of colours" in his 1804 broadsheet.