588 BRAINERD: VIOLA PALMATA AND ITS ALLIES 
April 13, 1905; Bush 2942, Swan, Mo., May 21, 1905; Bush 4435, 
Chadwick, Mo., May 14, 1907—all in fruit. Specimens in flower 
are: Bush 4208, Swan, Mo., April 21, 1907; and Bush 4340-A, 
Monteer, Mo., April 27, 1907. Specimens collected last March 
and April in Crowley, La. (within 45 miles of the Gulf), at Mans- 
field, La., at Mena, Ark., and at Westville, Okla., appear in my 
distribution, 1910, of violets of eastern North America. 
A few words should be said of another little-known violet of 
Elliott’s, V. ESCULENTA. It appears in Small’s Flora of the South- 
eastern United States as V. heterophylla Muhl. The type is to be 
seen in the Elliott herbarium, now carefully preserved in the 
Charleston Museum. The plant has unusually long petioles and 
peduncles—most over 25 cm.—apparently “drawn” from the 
crowding of other plants. It has one uncut leaf on a petiole of 10 
cm., one cordate-ovate leaf with short hastate lobes, and two 
broadly reniform leaves deeply 5-lobed. Raised above the leaves 
is a half-grown capsule split in drying, and three cm. lower, a 
petaliferous flower. The ticket has the following inscription: 
Viola esculenta 
mihi: 
Heterophylla 
Muhl: © 
Flor. Apr: 
in udis, 
Ogeechee etiam in 
river swamps. nnsy 
When, however, in 1817 Elliott published this violet in his Botany 
of South Carolina and Georgia, it was under the name V. palmata 
L., var. heterophylla, with the remark, ‘‘From the circumstance 
of its being eaten by negroes, I had called it V. esculenta; it is 
however the V. heterophylla of Muhlenberg.”” A valid publication 
of this last specific name was made by LeConte in 1826. He 
observes that the plant bears hardly any affinity to V. palmata, 
and adds, “‘It is strange that Elliott, otherwise sufficiently disposed 
