BICKNELL: VIOLA OBLIQUA HILL AND OTHER VIOLETS 269 
Yet another violet should here receive a word. Little recog- 
nition has been accorded to Viola domestica. I ask myself, 
Can it be alone from force of first impressions that this violet 
remains to me one of the most individualized and set apart species 
of its group? No other one is altogether glabrous. I have given 
the closest scrutiny to very many growing plants and failed to 
detect on even one so much asa single hair. Rare examples viewed 
by lens do show some obscure appressed spiculae near the margin 
of the leaf on its upper face, but such plants are so unusual as to 
suggest some admixture in the strain. By this rather remarkable 
absence of pubescence this violet is at marked variance from the 
one that has been combined with it under ‘ papilionacea,”’ in 
which some dorsal hairiness on the leaf is so constant a character. 
There is other evidence that these two violets are of c_llateral 
rather than lineal relationship. In more than one direction they 
disclose an obviously different course of growth. In the pubescent 
one, I know not what other name to call it by than Viola laetecae- 
rulea Greene, the scapes at flowering are erect, bearing the flowers 
high, even above the leaves, later becoming flexuous or sometimes 
declined; in Viola domestica they are always shorter than the 
leaves and tend to rise obliquely, sometimes bearing the flowers 
out around the sides of the tuft. The light green leaves of Viola 
laetecaerulea at flowering time are normally deeply cordate, later 
becoming dilated and taking a more or less subtruncate base; 
those of Viola domestica are from the first openly cordate or sub- 
truncate and show much less change of form with age. They are 
of a strikingly bright deep green and when young somewhat 
succulent and shining. The flowers are unlike those of Viola 
laetecrerulea, or any other violet known to me, having longer more 
twisted often narrowly rhomboid petals of deeper hue intensifying 
into a dark true purple. The upper pair when in ultimate position 
are not only reflexed but deflexed backward by a downward 
twist from the base. Viola laetecaerulea is one of our earliest 
flowering blue violets, Viola domestica the latest of all. While 
the former is partly domesticated the latter must be, I think, 
considered as wholly so. _ It is found by fence rows, in old orchards, 
yards and abandoned grounds, growing in rich but never in wet 
soils and in shade or partial stade as if it had come originally from 
