88 Pollard Violets of the Atlantic Coast. 



brous and succulent, chiefly remarkable for the constancy exhib 

 ited in the shape of their lobes, which in every one of the numer 

 ous plants examined consisted of a large central lobe and three 

 lateral pairs, having a pinnate instead of a palmate arrangement, 

 the large lobe serving as a rachis. Minor characters are presented 

 also in the shape of the rootstock. 



Our commonest violet has passed under a very varied assort 

 ment of names. In Hill's Hortus Kewensis Viola obliqua is first 

 described and so well figured as to leave not the slightest doubt 

 concerning the plant to which it refers. * Twenty years later 

 Aiton in a similar work describes V. obliqua and V. cucullata, as 

 signing the former name to a plant with pale flowers (' : petala 

 straminea ") which may have been an albino of the same species, 

 or else something quite distinct, f At all events, Alton's cucul 

 lata is Hill's obliqua, and the former name, though promulgated 

 twenty years later, has been accepted by all our botanists up to 

 the present time, obliqua, if retained at all, being based on Aiton's 

 and not on Hill's plant. Dr. Gray admits the applicability of the 

 name obliqua to our common violet in his revision of the genus 

 published in the Botanical Gazette for 1886,1 where he says 

 " The name cucullata would have to give way to the much earlier- 

 published V. obliqua Hill, well figured and unmistakable in his 

 Hortus Kewensis." The calamity that would attend the taking 

 up of an older name Dr. Gray averted by retaining the plant 

 in question as a variety of palmata. The characters have been 

 chiefly pointed out in connection with the latter ; it only re 

 mains to say that obliqua has the earlier leaves reniform, the 

 later ones cordate and cucullate, usually glabrate or subpubes- 

 cent, and grows in wet or damp situations. 



The history of Walter's V. villosa affords a further illustration 

 of the differences in opinion between early and late botanists. 

 Before 1850 it was recognized as a good species in nearly every 

 published work, including the monographs of Schweinitz and 

 Le Conte, Nuttall's Genera, and Torrey and Gray's Flora. It is 

 not mentioned in the first edition of Gray's Manual, but is 

 treated as a species in the second and third editions of the same 

 work, and depressed to varietal rank in the fifth, under the name 

 of cor data. In the first fascicle of the Synoptical Flora of North 

 America, part I, Dr. Robinson transfers this variety to palmata, 



* Hill, Hort. Kew., 316, t. 12, 1769. f Aiton, Hort. Kew., 3, 288, 1789. 

 JCoult. Bot. Gaz., 1. c. 



