Vol. 37 No 4 
BULLETIN 
TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB 
APRIL, rgto 
The violets of Staten Island 
PHILIP DOWELL 
(WITH PLATES 11-18) 
This list of the native violets growing on Staten Island is the 
result of several years of intensive study of the plants in the field 
and in cultivation at home. In the case of some of the hybrid 
plants, their identity could be established only by thus keeping 
them under constant observation through at least one season ; and 
so there may be found in violet collections a number of specimens 
that cannot be identified with any degree of certainty. A number 
of such specimens from Staten Island are not included in this list. 
Violets in general grow well in cultivation, even in a small city 
lot, like my own garden, but a few do not thrive so well and are 
less easily grown. In general they retain in cultivation the same 
characters as in their natural habitat, but those transplanted from 
moist or shady woodlands have acquired more or less the charac- 
ter of the same species growing naturally inthe open. A plant of 
V. papilionacea, for example, transplanted from the Emerson Hill 
woods, acquired the characteristics of the form that has been 
described as V. domestica. 
Acknowledgments are due to Dr. E. Brainerd, to whom we 
owe so much of our present knowledge of violets, and who kindly 
examined my earlier collection of violets, and to Dr. Homer 
D. House, who has presented his extensive collection of violets to 
the Staten Island Association of Arts and Sciences and thus made 
it available for general study. 
[The BuLLeTIN for March, 1910 (37: 97-162. A/. 9, 0) was issued 31 Mr Ig10.] 
