VIOLA. 



neck, among these, on stems of 2 or 3 inches in May, arises a profusion 

 of very large violets, or rather small pansies, well above the neat and 

 tidy clump of foliage, and, in themselves, of a rich and glorious purple, 

 with blotches of violet darkness radiating into the potals from the rim 

 of the white eye ; the two lengthily oval upper petals stand apart from 

 each other, too, so that the flower gets the look of an alert and prick- 

 eared little purple rabbit. It is indeed a most precious jewel, and in 

 tho garden of a vigour equal to its beauty, though it never throws any 

 runners, and can only be multiplied from seed, or most careful division 

 of the main crown ; in cultivation, like V. calcarata, it does not seem 

 always and everywhere to bo as lavish as it should of its imperial 

 well-built blossoms, with their rounded and comfortable petals of 

 exaggerated violet -design. They both, it seems, want to be ripened 

 for flower by a perfectly dry resting-lime in winter, followed by a 

 soaking wet period of development when tho snows are weeping them- 

 solves profusely away through the mountains of the world. The 

 casual wanderer is not likely to come upon V. alpina ; it is a species of 

 the far Eastern Alps, where, in the turf and sometimes even in the rocks 

 of the limestone ranges, it replaces V. calcarata. It is lavishly abundant 

 within its range ; occupying all the grass of the Styrian and lower 

 Austrian limestones, in company with Campanula alpina, Dianthus 

 alpinus, Primula Clusiana, P. minima, P. auricula, and Androsace 

 lactea ; it then has a patch of profusion in the Western Carpathians 

 (on the Tatra and Mount Choc, &c), and after that has no further 

 habitation on earth, except the caterpillar-curve of its profuse distri- 

 bution along the high limestones of Transylvania. It has a charm 

 distinct from all violets, and from all pansies, yet partaking of both, 

 and doubling them all. 



V. altaica is one of the great-great-grandmothers of our garden 

 Pansies. It stands near V. calcarata, making looser, freer masses, 

 with abundant noble pansies, continuing through the summer, of lilac, 

 yellow, mauve, or purple, with a shorter spur than in V. calcarata, 

 and shorter, broader leaves. It is a plant from the alps of Asia Minor 

 and the Altai, as easy and hearty as its descendants suggest. 



V. arbor escens is a most curious small woody -trunked tree-violet 

 of 6 or 8 inches high. Here and there wander the grey trunks across 

 the ground, arising at their ends to produce tufts of narrow little 

 long-oval leaves, with a profusion of lavender-bluo violets. It is a 

 rare species and very delicately lovely, only found in the dunes and 

 sandy places and open seaward woods of the South of France, &c. ; in 

 cultivation it is not known at all, the pretender that bears a misleadingly 

 similar name, V. arborea, in catalogues, being nothing more than a 



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