Columbines are erect, slender, branching perennial herbs growing from a persistent semi-woody base.  Basal leaves are ternately 1 to 3 times compound with leaflets being variusly cleft or lobed and stalked. Cauline leaves are alternate, similar to basal leaves and upwardly reduced.  Inflorescence is a few-flowered panicle with radially symmetric, perfect, pendulous flowers on long pedicels.  Each flower has five short-clawed sepals, five flat-limbed and spurred petals and five carpels with linear stigmas and elongate styles.  Fruit follicles are erect, short-beaked and with many seeds.