VIOLA. 



On the whole it seems likely that a sandy and perfectly-drained wood- 

 land mixture, light and free, but B] d clammy and well 

 watered from below in spring, will bee ■ the plant's home- 

 sickness, if only it be enshrined in som to the 



be sun. (New pieces will pay for being potted for a season in 

 thumb-pots, and nursed up in a frame beneath a light covering of 

 manure through the winter, in a shady aspect, and with the ;r 

 kept on when the weather threatens fr< different treatments 



succeed or fail with it in different places, and sometimes it thrives in 

 moraine, and sometimes in pure sand. In any case it is well deserving 

 of all the trouble it gives, so delicately beautiful are the tufts of quite 

 dwarf and dark bird-clawed foliage ; and so splendid the noble orange- 

 point illed ample violets with back-turning upper petals, hovering on 

 their 2- or 3-inch stalks like golden-bodied butterflies of a lucent blue 

 lavender, which is hardly improved in the form V. p. tricolor, where 

 the two backs* _ upper petals are of richest viol- 



making a royal contrast with the bland melting lilac of the 1 

 and the springing point of fire from the flower's heart. There is also 

 a lovely and purely virginal albino form. There seems, with us, little 

 propagation except by division, and those clumped fleshy stocks are by 

 far too precious to be harried, supposing they Lave lasted on for two or 

 three seasons, and formed into a comely clump of three or four crowns. 



V. pedatifida is a most variable plant., but has the same handsomely 

 divided, bird-clawed foliage, this time furrher adorned by prominent 

 fan-shaped veins. It forms clumps from a vertical stock, and the 

 flowers are solid and goodly purple violets on stems of 8 inches. It 

 belongs to the prairies of the Northern States, and includes two marked 

 )pments, at least, in T". p. Bernard* and V. p. 



V. pedunculata comes from California, where it forms ruffling fields 

 all gold one minute and all bright brown the next, as its blossoms 

 ripple under the wind. It is a most lovel red, warm 



place in light, rich soil, where, from its stocks, it sends up normal 

 -violet Leaves, firmly upstanding and rather squashed down in 

 outline till they are like a flattened heart with a few forward-pointing 

 fine jags towards the tip. H : gh above th< ■ or 8 



inches, goes sailing an incessant Be od very round 



violets of pure gold, with the two upp I el on the 



reverse with mahogany, so that the field of flowers under the sun laughs 

 innumerably in alternate twinkles of flame and flickers of brown be- 

 tween the 



V. i rare treasure of the Alps, a frail thing and rather 



difficult to grow, the only one of our alpine violets with divided foliage 



460 



