VIOLA. 



horrid trunked form of the sweet Violet which you trail up a stick 

 and then call the Tree Violet, flamboyantly proclaiming its lanky 

 laok of charm. 



V. arenaria has one station only in England, on the Widdybank 

 Fell, but over the sunny slopes of fine alpine grass, as, for instance, on 

 the Mont Cenis, is quite common and charming, well worthy of the 

 garden, though it is only a tiny tufted violet, with small, rounded, palo 

 leaves, and a reckless profusion of dear little comely rounded flowers 

 of lavender-lilac on stems of about an inch or so. 



V. atlantica=V. Brittoniana, q.v. 



V. atriplicifolia has small yellow violets in the woods of North 

 America, but does not seem a species of special value. 



V. Beckwithii offers us rich rare beauty, with its magnified violets, 

 of which the two upper petals are of deep purple, while the rest are of 

 pale soft whitish lilac, veined with darkness and bearded with gold. 

 They stand high on their steins of 5 or 6 inches above the bold, broad, 

 heart-shaped violet-foliage, and their lower petals are nibbled at the 

 edge. It lives in the Sierras of California, and when caught should 

 be cosseted accordingly. 



V. bellidifolia comes from sub-alpine regions of the Rockies ; it is 

 a minute stem-forming plant of 2 or 3 inches high, with a generous 

 abundance of little violets, lighter in the three lower purple-veined 

 petals than in the upper ones. 



V. Bertoloni=V. cenisia, q.v. 



V. Bielsiana is a Transylvanian form indistinguishable from V. 

 tricolor. 



V. biflora runs across the Northern hemisphere, fighting up all the 

 cool and shadowy places of the Alps with the dancing golden sunlight 

 of its little flowers like fallen sparks of day into the green dimness 

 of forest or path-side. It should have the same cool hollows in 

 moist and gritty soil in the garden ; where it will impermanently make 

 itself at home and take to running about and illuminating the un- 

 promising places with its flickering palo glints throughout the 

 summer. It can easily be divided, or raised from seed ; in the alpine 

 woods it often makes whole wide carpets of shivering fire, as for 

 instance in the deep and solemn ancient woods of the upper Boreon, 

 where the silent forest is almost noisy with the crackling of its 

 innumerable golden flashes, uttered daintily by pairs above the sheeted 

 masses of pale kidney-shaped leaves, in such a bewilderment of 

 brilliance that all tho dappled distance of the woodland is a dance of 

 golden daylight under the dark. 



V. blanda of some authorit ies is V. fallens. V. blanda of others is 



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