By the 1960s, the Schnurr Columbine was unofficially considered extinct. This is not the end of the story. Enter the Fennimore family of Colorado Springs. David Fennimore, a high school biology teacher, had read Schnurr’s original 1931 paper as a graduate student. He became obsessed. Every summer, he dragged his reluctant wife, Eleanor, and their two teenage children up treacherous slopes with a tattered copy of Schnurr’s hand-drawn map.
"I didn't scream," Eleanor recalled in a 1995 interview. "I just whispered, 'David, come look at this.' He crawled on his hands and knees for ten minutes before he spoke. Then he cried." schnurr columbine
But in —the same month Apollo 11 landed on the moon—the Fennimores made their own small discovery. High on the northwest flank of Mount Rosa , Eleanor sat down to rest on a boulder. Looking down between her boots, she saw it: a cluster of six pale yellow blooms, each with impossibly long, straight spurs. By the 1960s, the Schnurr Columbine was unofficially
They had found the Schnurr Columbine, alive and thriving, in a micro-habitat less than 200 square feet. The rediscovery was kept secret for five years to prevent poaching. Eventually, the Fennimores worked with the U.S. Forest Service to protect the site. Today, the exact location remains undisclosed to the public, though a small interpretive sign at the Pikes Peak Highway overlook mentions the flower's story. David Fennimore, a high school biology teacher, had
The verdict? A natural, stable variant—unique to the Pikes Peak massif. In 1931, it was formally named Aquilegia schnurrii in his honor. Here is where the story takes a somber turn. After its discovery, the Schnurr Columbine was never found again. For nearly 40 years, botanists scoured the Pikes Peak region. Expeditions returned empty-handed. The type specimen—the single dried plant in New York—became a ghost. Many concluded that the original population had been destroyed by a rockslide or over-collecting.
In the summer of 1928, Schnurr was on a collecting expedition near and the Windy Point area. He wasn't looking for a new species; he was cataloging high-altitude flora for the Carnegie Institution. But as he scrambled over a particularly unstable scree field, he spotted a columbine that didn't match any drawing in his field guide.