64 PITTONIA. 
Four New VIOLETS. 
All these proposed new species of Viola are of the acau- 
lescent purple-flowered group. All except one have been 
known to me more or less imperfectly since 1897, and have 
been referred to one and another published species; but their 
distinctive peculiarities have now this year been strongly 
forced upon ine by seeing them in flower alongside those 
with which I had confused them. 
V.rRATINCOLA. Rootstocks mostly elongated and ascend- 
ing, stout and knotted, herbage wholly glabrous and rather 
light-green: early leaves reniform-cordate, evenly and closely 
crenate, those of summer of similar outline but 24 to 4 inches 
wide, cuspidately acuminate, commonly much broader than 
long, therefore cordate-reniform: peduneles of petaliferous 
early flowers, stout, elongated, bearing the flowers mostly 
above the leaves, terete, though with a narrow groove up 
and down the upper side; bractlets very short, broadly tri- 
angular-subulate, inserted at or below midway of the pedun- 
cle: sepals oblong-lanceolate, obtuse, nerveless, or the up- 
. permost one 3-nerved, all with short nearly truncate entire 
auricles: corolla $ inch broad, light-blue, all the petals broad 
and rounded, white at base, the lower pronouncedly purple- 
veined, the laterals strongly bearded at base with long white 
hairs mostly terete and cylindric but some abruptly clavel- 
late-dilated at tip: apetalous flowers of summer mostly or 
altogether hy pogeous. 
I collected this plant in its summer condition, on the first 
of July, 1898, in a low meadow of natural vegetation (the 
land never having been ploughed) near the banks of the Des 
Moines River, at Windom, Minnesota. It was growing in 
great abundance in the rich black prairie soil among grasses 
and lilies (Lilium umbellatum). Copious living specimens 
