VIOLA. 



less of a trial to the cultivator. For botanists are perpetually sub- 

 dividing them and giving them names, which the nurseryman seizes 

 on at once, and sends their wearers out unannotated, as species, so that 

 the zealots of Viola are for ever buying V. calcarata under unrecog- 

 nisable and expensive epithets. One of the most important and 

 oldest of these is V. Zoysii, which is no more than a thin-flowered yellow 

 form of the type, with a deep notch in the lower petal. Other named 

 but vague developments, all belonging to V. calcarata in major or 

 minor habit, and all of them, accordingly, plants of the greatest beauty, 

 are V. elongata, V. Eugeniae (these two being the same large develop- 

 ment of the species), V. Corsica, V. aetnensis, and V. nebrodensis. 



V. calycina has the leafy tufts of the common Pansy, but is probably 

 perennial, with flowers in the way of V. rothomagensis, but yellow. It 

 is a diminished version of V. olympica from the meadows of Pisidia, 

 differing in the size no less than in the broad, blunt lobes of the calyx. 



V. canadensis is a variable plant from the woods of North America, 

 making long and leafy branches of a foot or 16 inches, with heart- 

 shaped, saw-edged leaves, and abundant large violets of very pale 

 colour, almost white, with a yellow heart and a veined fine flush 

 of purple from their base. It is a widespread species, and among 

 the many forms it takes are the small and deep-coloured V. c. scopu- 

 lorum, and the most magnificent, perhaps, of all its group, the brilliant 

 V. c. Rydbergi, an inestimable easy treasure for good open soil in the 

 garden. 



V. canina needs no introduction to the garden. It has innumer- 

 able varieties, all of which, with the type, are quite as well worthy of 

 the garden as many a rarity that there lifts a brazen and expensive 

 face of ugliness. Among these are V. c. stricta, an upright growing 

 form ; V. c. Ruppii or Hornemannii, a form from damp meadows, 

 with especially broad-pet ailed flowers of clear blue-violet ; V. c. 

 lancifolia (V. lusitanica), with very starry violets of light blue, not at 

 all lilac or mauve ; V. c. Jordani, narrow in the leaf and dainty in the 

 long lip ; V. c. stagnina, an English bog-plant, rather coarse and 

 straggling, with white or deathly pale blossoms ; V. c. Schultzii, a special 

 rarity from Alsace, which outrages its family by having blossoms of 

 pale yellow, melting into white ; V. c. pumila, another rarity of damp 

 places, and a pretty little plant of striped pale-lilac flower, and V. c. 

 elatior, a fine and largo development, with big violets of soft lavender. 



V. cenisia is the High Alpine Pansy, whose lovely purple faces, with 

 their golden eyes and delicate black-pencilled moustache, you may 

 often see twinkling at you across the desolate expanses of the last and 

 highest shingles of all, in the upmost folds of the mountains where the 



(1,996) 4.49 ii. — 2 p 



