Aquilegia elegantula, the western red columbine, is a perennial species of flowering plant in the family Ranunculaceae, native to the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
Aquilegia elegantula is a rhizomatous perennial herb growing tall. The green leaf blades are borne on long, slender petioles and divided into three leaflets which each have rounded lobes along the front edges. The flower has five long petals up to in length including their elongated, knob-tipped spurs. The petals are bright red in the spurs and lighten to yellow-green or orange at the tips. Between the petals are the oval-shaped sepals, which are reddish to yellowish in color and are held parallel to the petals. Flowers often droop such that the mouth is toward the ground and the spurs point up.
The species is probably most closely related to Aquilegia coerulea and is part of a clade containing all the North American species of columbines that likely split from their closest relatives in East Asia in the mid-Pliocene, approximately 3.84 million years ago.
The specific epithet elegantula means "rather elegant" in Latin.
The species is native to the Four Corners states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, and Coahuila and Nuevo León in northern Mexico. It grows in moist Douglas fir and spruce–fir forests and on river banks at altitudes of .
The flowers are pollinated by the broad-tailed hummingbird Selasphorus platycercus.
, NatureServe listed Aquilegia elegantula as Secure (G5). This status was last reviewed on . NatureServe notes that the species is widespread and common across much of its range.