ACAULESCENT VIOLETS. 141 
a richer soil and a warmer easterly or southerly exposure. 
V. sagittata with us occurs only in low moist situations, 
among small grasses, rushes and sedges, not far from streams 
or springs. All three are alike in producing their late cleis- 
togamous and apetalous flowers on slender erect peduncles. 
My reason for mentioning this will appear under the dis- 
cussion of the next group, where a very different condition 
of things exists. 
isi praphieelly first in that perplexed alliance cluster- 
ing around V. cucullata is— 
V. PALMATA, Linn. In the very earliest records of the 
species we find allusion made to the variability of its foliage. 
Clayton described it as having “some leaves incised, others 
entire.”* Gronovius observed the principal leaves to be 
“palmately sinuate,” and the lower and smaller ones to be 
“undivided and reniform.”2 Linnæus himself characterizes 
the leaves as either palmately 5-lobed or undivided.’ There 
is less definiteness in this than in the descriptions drawn up 
by his predecessors, for he does not specify what leaves are 
palmated and what undivided. Nevertheless his very vague- 
ness is safer; for I find occasional patches of plants easily 
referable to true V. palmata in which no lobe or incision of 
the margin is found in any of the leaves, great or small, 
early or late. Still I have no difficulty in distinguishing 
between any form or phase of this and V. obliqua or cucul- 
lata. It is always notably pubescent, the petioles being even 
rather strongly viilous or villous-hirsute. It is a more soli- 
tary plant, with fewer leaves and flowers, the rootstock seldom 
branching or producing more than one growing point, the 
individuals never colonizing and taking possession of any 
given space, as V. obliqua usually dees. It is never found 
save in light but dry and rather rich open woods and thickets. 
I believe that the form found in the District of Columbia 
! Gronov. Virg. 1 ed. 108 (1739). 
? Gronov. Virg. 2 ed. 135 (1762). 
3 Spec. Pl. 933 (1753). 
