Viola obliqua Hill and other violets 
EUGENE P. BICKNELL 
Viola obliqua—the name is become anathema! Venerable 
indeed, yet ffom of old misunderstood even by those who have 
sought to do it honor, rejected, reinstated, and at last altogether 
cast out, it may be deeméd a matter for apology that it should be 
now once again brought forward. Nevertheless I ask a further 
hearing in its behalf—the fraternity of violarians must be my 
judge. 
The name seems first to have emerged into the modern light 
in the Illustrated Flora. If recollection ke not at fault, I myself 
had some part in this. And the view then shared with the author 
of that work, Hill's illustration before us, that this discredited 
name was perfectly available for exact use, has not suffered any 
change. I have not turned to Hill’s much ridiculed plate from 
that day until this writing, nor do I suppose that Doctor Britton 
has, yet, viewing it together now we are at agreement as before. 
More redoubtably than any other writer, more picturesquely, 
Doctor Greene has used his slings and arrows against this name.* 
Yet, as his page presently allows us to see, with friendly purpose! 
His onslaught—assuredly not to be withstood—finally by a hairs- 
breadth evades a fatal issue. With fine dexterity the all but 
destroyed thing has been rescued and, on the instant, sent forth with 
now well-established rights—for how shall it ever again be assailed 
with better success? Yet somewhere wasa miscalculation. Later 
writers, and there have appeared not a few, have.approved the 
name as extinct, perhaps not stopping to apprehend this reinstate- 
ment or the dryness of Doctor Greene’s closing avowal ‘‘ the most 
common of all East American violets . . . I am confident it can 
never be proven that it is not Viola obliqua Hill.” 
Doctor Greene has made his hypothetical objector say of Hill’s 
plate that ‘‘ it does not half represent any violet that ever grew in 
any country. It is glaringly false in representing flowers erect on 
* Pittonia 3: 142-143. 1896. 
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