In a single blossom, our state flower the blue columbine is a perfect echo of Colorado grandeur. You know it in a flash when your eyes first see it. The draping floral tubes drip like glistening droplets from a faraway mountain spring. Its corolla dazzles your eyes with a starburst of geometric wizardry. Bright stamens stare in your face like fairy-sized golden clubs.



Legend has it, that the blue, the white, and the gold colors of the columbine are true to life itself, here in Colorado. The blue, they say, is for the Colorado blue sky. “None bluer”, which of course, is hard to deny.

The white, it is said, for the virgin powder snow. Reserved in secret troves for those who wake early, on a snow-blessed winter morn. Ones seeking outback freshies, are rewarded further still, “champagne powder” is the cheer, figure eights then later beer.

And finally there’s the sparkling gold, the reason that they came. The first seekers came for beaver pelts, the second for gold in hand. The third wave found true riches, in wild places brimmed full with special flowers, which enshrine the very wonder of Colorado itself.