QTRbooora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 7 December, 1905 No. 84 
NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND VIOLETS, — III. 
EzRA BRAINERD. 
STUDIES of our white stemless violets for three seasons past have 
brought to light several interesting and important facts. The Lin- 
nean species, Viola primulifolia and V. lanceolata, seem to be, at 
least in the Northern States, well defined and properly understood. 
For many years the remaining forms of the group passed as one 
species under the name Y. blanda, Willd. (1804). LeConte in 1828 
was the first to separate from this aggregate his V. amoena; and 
in 1870 Dr. Gray distinguished V. renifolia. Butit is important in 
this work of segregation to find out just what Willdenow had before 
him and described as Y. blanda. It appears to have been a living 
plant sent from near Philadelphia and grown in the gardens at Berlin. 
It may be that a dried specimen of it was never made; at least, Dr. 
Robinson, who the past summer made a search for the type in the 
Berlin herbaria, reports that none is to be found. 
But with the publication of Viola blanda was issued an admirable 
colored plate; regarding this Dr. Britton observed in a letter last 
May: “It looks to me as though the original figure of V. blanda 
represents what we are calling V. Leconteana” (V. amoena, LeConte). 
I have examined this plate both at the Herbarium of the New York 
Botanical Garden and at the Gray Herbarium. The hand coloring 
in both copies is quite the same, and represents the peduncle and 
petioles and even the midrib as reddish, — a good character of V. 
amoena, but one never seen in what has been passing with us as 
V. blanda. Furthermore, the outline of, the leaf, its crenation, and 
the structure of the flower plainly indicate the first mentioned spe- 
