1904] Brainerd, — Notes on New England Violets 1 5 



4. V. papilionacca^ Pursh, is the name taken up in recent years by 

 Messrs. Greene and Pollard for the common purple-flowered violet 

 of meadows and orchards, including the form found frequently in 

 door-yards and borders of streets ( F, domestica. Kicknell). In New 

 England the species is more frequently seen within fifty miles of 

 the coast than farther inland. In habitat and general aspect it 

 seems quite distinct from its near ally, V. latiuscula. But when one 

 attempts to state the difference, as in the above synopsis, the marks 

 of distinctness are found to be elusive, — if not illusory. 



5. V. sororia, Willd. The colored plate that accompanies the 

 original publication of this species represents the petioles as erect 

 and edged with sparse spreading hairs. This is a peculiarity of the 

 plants to which we apply the name, and there can be no reasonable 

 doubt as to its applicability. Dr. Hritton so understands the species 

 in the Illustrated Flora (ii. 448). It is the commonest of all violets 

 in the Champlain Valley and occurs in various situations. In wet 

 mucky woodlands its leaves are not infrequently 40 cm. high and 15 

 cm. wide ; in the hollows of open pastures and on sparsely wooded 

 hillsides its leaves are usually but 7-10 cm. high and 5-7 cm. wide, 

 In the latter situation it fruits in autumn far more abundantly than 

 in the former. 



I have included under V. sororia, several of Prof. Greene's spe- 

 cies, especially his V. ciispidata^ V. Dicksonii, and V. nodosa, — con- 

 fessing my inability to make out any other than trifling or local 

 differences between them. In Pittonia (v. 103) Prof. Greene has 

 called attention to a singular feature that he has observed in V. 

 Dicksonii : — the occurrence of underground fruit "converted into 

 what appears to be a berry. It is evidently globose (as large as an 

 ordinary wild gooseberry, or middle-sized pea), absolutely indehis- 

 cent, the pressed and dried pericarp being unbroken, translucent 

 and showing the seeds that lie within, just as, in the herbarium, the 

 seeds of many a berry-like fruit are seen through their fleshy cover- 

 ing in its dried state." This is but a malformation of the capsule 

 due to the sting of a gall-fly. A dissection of the "baccate fruit" in 

 August shows the presence of the scarlet larvae of a species of this 

 sort of insect. We flnd that at least four other species of Viola — 

 V. palfnata, V. z'enustiila, V. cucnllata and V. septentrional is — are 

 attacked in the same way, though with less frequency. 



6. V. pahnata, L., has been found in Vermont in only a few 



