266 BICKNELL: VIOLA OBLIQUA HILL AND OTHER VIOLETS 
pubescence, now its too intimate associate, still to be called Viola 
sororia but taking a more gracilent habit and narrower form of leaf. 
More intermediate in the series are plants of stronger growth and 
in these we seem to see our pubescent “ papilionacea,’’ never, 
perhaps, exactly as we know it in its semi-domesticated state but 
so much the same that the origin of our plant would seem to 
be disclosed as though in an open book. We have been here 
freely following appearances and may have been easily mislead 
in thus seeming to have traced our plant back to the mode of 
its beginning. - Nothing like demonstration has assured us. But, 
if it were indeed a proved thing, even then our semi-domesticated 
“ papilionacea,"’ far along in its generations, would be manifestly 
of a higher category than those chance hybrids we seem to come 
upon in the making. Our plant thrives in places whence both of 
its suggested parents have disappeared, or perhaps have never 
been. It is become independent of the parental aid, is self per- 
petuating. It is, by continuous descent from season to season, no 
longer a hybrid, but rather a species whose hybrid origin goes back 
—how far we may not know. Such a plant is surely to be ac- 
corded its own distinctive name. I have not found that such a 
name has ever been given unless the pleasing one Viola laetecaerulea 
of Doctor Greene may happily prove to be available. 
Most certainly we cannot continue to call this plant Viola 
papilionacea Pursh. We turn to Pursh and read under this 
name, it is so clear we cannot be mistaken, the quite sufficient 
description of no other violet than our common one of boggy 
meadows and wet places that we have been calling Viola cucullata 
Aiton. Of this violet there is an open meadow form, it has 
doubtless been remarked by all of us who have given any field 
attention to violet matters, that has definable points of difference 
from more usual phases of the plant and this, may we not say 
unmistakably, is the form more particularly held in view by Pursh. 
In my collections formerly made about Van Cortlandt Park I 
find specimens of this plant put aside as far back as 1895 under a 
herbarium name given with reference to the notably triangular 
cordate and acute leaves well-developed as early as the time of 
flowering. The leaves are not strongly cucullate nor strictly gla- 
brous nor is their marginal pattern at all pronounced (‘ triangu- 
