Calle de las Aguileñas

The columbine is a flower of gardens and damp woodland that opens violet bells with five curved spurs full of nectar. That is where its name comes from: those who described it in Latin called it Aquilegia, from aquila, eagle, because the bent spurs look like a bird of prey’s talons closing over the flower. The street belongs to a neighborhood of botanical names. In this stretch of Almenara, and across the rest of Tetuán, streets honor geraniums, heliotrope, tuberoses and magnolias. Many were renamed in the mid-twentieth century, when Madrid absorbed Chamartín de la Rosa and the duplicate names in the merged street map had to be undone. Seeding the map with flowers proved an easy and plentiful solution. The columbine has its trap: pretty and poisonous at once, its leaves and seeds hold small doses of compounds that release cyanide. In medieval Christian painting, by contrast, it stood for purity, which is why it appears at the Virgin’s feet in so many old panels.