BICKNELL: VIOLA OBLIQUA HILL AND OTHER VIOLETS 267 
laricordatis acutis crenatis subcucullatis glabriusculis’’—Pursh's de- 
scription could scarcely be more exact) ; the peduncles, at flowering, 
little if at all surpass the leaves in height (pedunculis longitudine 
foliorum); the flowers, compared with those of the Viola obliqua 
series, are explicitly more papilionaceous, allowing for the fanciful 
application of this adjective to the: flower of a violet, (‘‘ petalis 
obovatis: 3. inferioribus infra medium barbatis conniventibus, 
2. superioribus reflexis’’).* Point by point Pursh’s description 
meets the distinctive characters of this plant, proving slightly 
inexact only in respect of the variable bearding of the petals, for 
the odd one, although sometimes slightly bearded, is prevailingly 
glabrous. The bearding dusted with pollen readily becomes 
Pursh’s ‘“ yellow down.’ ‘‘ Flowers blue, elegantly striated,”’ 
points with unmistakable indication to the flowers of our meadow 
violet distinguished above all others by the delicacy and sharp 
beauty of their dark penciling. ‘‘ In wet places’ would scarcely 
be particularly affirmed of any other blue-flowered heart-leaved 
violet, although Pursh does say of his other one “In grassy 
wet places,’ wherein, however, is more of a distinction than 
might appear to one not well knowing our violets in the places 
where they grow. Upon the face of the evidence this other violet 
of Pursh’s, his ‘‘ Viola cucullata Ait.,’”’ was our Viola obliqua. 
Its glabrous leaves, cucullate only at the base, had more promi- 
nently indentured margins than the crenate leaves of his Viola 
papilionacea, he expressed the difference by calling them “ ser- 
rate ’’; the scapes were shorter, an essential distinction; the petals 
were obliquely bent, therefore the upper pair less characteristically 
reflexed and the others more open. The two plants are thus 
placed by Pursh in unmistakable apposition. The lateral petals 
are described as being merely ‘‘ bearded,” not, as in his papili- 
onacea, ‘‘ infra medium barbatis,” an acute distinction, not to bear 
a too literal rendering, but quite true in the sense that the bearding 
in the one species is more restricted and relatively mcre basal on 
the petal than in the other. Mr. Stone is, I think, the only recent 
writer who has called attention to the more forward extension of 
* It should be said that this description applies more particularly to the flower 
in its earlier and its later stages—I know of no violet the flower of which at the 
stage of fullest development is not more or less widely expanded. 
