Z 
Vol, 39 : No. 3 
BULLETIN 
OF THE 
TORREY BOTANICAL CLUB 
MARCH 1g12 
Violet hybrids between species of the palmata group 
Ezra BRAINERD 
(WITH PLATES 5-7) 
In my last paper on violet hybrids, published over six years 
ago, and in the one preceding it,* I described only one hybrid 
whose parents were both in the natural group represented by 
Viola palmata. I recognized the fact, however, that these closely 
allied species seemed “to be confluent when growing together,” 
and stated my belief that “they can and do interbreed.” It has 
been often observed that natural hybrids between doubtfully 
distinct species, or between a species and its variety, are the most 
difficult to determine with certainty; the less remote from each 
\ other the two species that hybridize, the less marked and less 
numerous are the signs of hybridity in the offspring. For six 
seasons now, I have had many suspicious intermediates of this 
group under cultivation, raising sometimes a hundred or more 
offspring from one plant, extending through three or four genera- 
tions. Some of the results of these experimental cultures, I trust, 
will prove of interest to students both of systematic botany and 
of heredity. 
VIOLA PALMATA X PAPILIONACEA Brainerd.t 
Leaves cordate-ovate as in V. papilionacea, lobed after the 
t Dowell, Ph. The violets of Staten Island. Bull. Torrey Club 37: 177. 
AP ror0, At least one of the specimens there cited (4777), Dr. Dowell would now 
call V, Papilionacea X triloba. 
(The Buttetin for February 1912 (39: 37-84. pl. 1-4) was issued 9 Mr 1912.] 
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