HAIRY BLUE VIOLET 



Viola soToria Willd. 



April - May 

 Woods, roadsides 



There is little difference between the hairy blue 

 \iolet and the common blue; sometimes they are 

 almost indistinguishable. Their main difference is 

 this: the connnon blue violet is smooth; the hairy blue violet has a fine 

 silky-hairy stem and smaller, more finely toothed leaves. The flowers 

 usually are a paler lavender blue. But both are loved by almost everyone 

 who knows any flowers at all. 



Violets have been a great boon to pickers of spring flowers. By the 

 very abundance of violets, the strain on the rarer flowers is partially 

 lessened. For although trout lilies, lady's slippers, trilliums, and many 

 more, may be destroyed by picking, the violet ])lants seem none the worse 

 for the ordeal. It is difficult to kill violet plants by over-picking. They 

 multiply I'apidly l)y extending their rootstocks. in addition to the manu- 

 facture of abundant seeds by means of cleistogamous flowers in summer. 

 Violets, therefore, are common, which is indeed a fortunate circumstance, 

 for in their popularity they might long since have vanished from the land. 

 Violets were known and loved long ago in ancient Greece and Eome; 

 they have been made into perfume and poetry and paintings and corsages. 

 In the United States, four states call the violet their special emblem — 

 Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. Now into the woods 

 and swamps and meadows and roadsides and gardens of an April land, 

 blue violets once again come into blossom and fulfill a certain promise 

 of the spring. 



The wild blue violet which is tlie state flower of Illinois usually is 

 identified by naturalists as the smooth meadow blue violet {Viola 

 papUionacea), but there are about a dozen species of these beautiful 

 flowers. The best known and most widely distributed is ])erhaps the hairy 

 blue violet, (Viola sororia). while almost as common in the wet woods is 

 the marsh blue violet. (Violit cucullata). 



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