146 The Ottawa Naturalist. [Feb. 



Linnaeus, in his Species Plantarum, described dozens of 

 violets, giving their characters from the shape of the leaves 

 and their general appearance. In only one case, however, 

 did he mention the flower and fruit, and this was done solely 

 because of the extraordinary biological feature encountered 

 in a species which he called V. niirabilis. This species, which 

 is found from Southern Sweden to the Alps of Switzerland, 

 was described as follows: — "Viola caule triquetro, foliis reni- 

 formi cordatis, floribus caulinis apetalis." To this description 

 was added especially: "Viola floribus radicalibus corollatis 

 abortienatibus, caulinis apetalis seminiferis. "^ The mere de- 

 scription of this violet, which is now known as V. mirabilis L. 

 indicates that Linnaeus considered it one of the wonders of 

 the plant kingdom just because of its peculiar mode of fruc- 

 tification. Its showy spring flowers, proving themselves per- 

 fectly useless for the propagation of the species, contrasted sin- 

 gularly with the inconspicuous and seemingly imperfect flowers, 

 which were developed later in the season from special shoots. 

 But these inconspicuous flowers, although in their general 

 aspect not betraying their importance, proved themselves 

 capable of safeguarding the existence of the species. Small wonder 

 that the name V. mirabilis — ^The Wonderful Violet — was given 

 to this species. 



In North America little attention seems to have been paid 

 to the morphology and the biological and systematical impor- 

 tance of cleistogamy in violets by the early botanists. Its 

 general occurrence in acaulescent violets, as far as the authors 

 have been able to ascertain, was first accentuated by Dr. 

 Edward L. Greene, whose observations dating frorn 1896, shed 

 much greatly needed light on the morphology and biological 

 relationships of North American violets. In the year 1896 

 Dr. Greene stated (according to extracts from Cybele Colum- 

 biana Vol. I, No. 1, 1914, p. 7) that "the very most common of 

 our so called acaulescent violets, continued long after their short 

 ■season of showy vernal flowering to put forth apetalous flowers 

 from which are produced all or nearly all the seeds by which 

 individuals are multiplied and the species perpetuated." 



As the production of seed in the capsules of the apetalous 

 flowers is the result of a process of self-fertilization and as further- 

 more the flowers in which this takes place, never open, it is 

 evident that the seed developed in the cleistogamous flowers 

 necessarilv is perfectly pure, i.e., that it gives when sown a 

 progen}^ of rlants having the characters of the parent plants. 

 In other words, through cleistogamy the pure lineage of the 

 various srecies is infallibly upheld. 

 'Linnaeus, Sp. Plant. 2, 936. 1753. 



