Schnurr Columbine [portable] May 2026

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.

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. schnurr columbine

"We thought Dad was crazy," recalls Margaret Fennimore-Torres, now 72. "We’d spend our Fourth of July holidays looking at rocks. My brother called it 'the wildflower that ate our childhood.'" By the 1960s, the Schnurr Columbine was unofficially