VIOLA CUCULLATA. 



COMMON BLUE VIOLET. 



NATURAL ORDER, VIOLACE^. 



Viola cucullata, Aiton. — Rootstocks thickly dentate with fleshy teeth, branching, and 

 forming compact masses; leaves all long-petioled and upright, heart-shaped, with a broad 

 sinus, varying to kidney-shaped and dilated-triangular, smooth, or more or less pubescent, 

 the sides at the base rolled inward when young, obtusely serrate, lateral, and often the 

 lower petals bearded ; spur short and thick ; stigma slightly beaked or beakless. 

 (Gray's Manual of Botany of the Northern States. See also Wood's Class-Book and 

 Chapman's Flora of the Southern States.) 



EW flowers are better known than the Violet. Our atten- 

 tion is attracted by it from infancy to old age. As the 

 chosen emblem of Napoleonism it has served many a sadly prac- 

 tical purpose, and it has been the theme of the poet from the 

 earliest times. As Viola it was known to the ancient Romans, 

 and the great Linnaeus adopted the name as the language of 

 science. In those early times, when poetry and nature were 

 blended so closely together, the Violet was received as especially 

 the emblem of constancy. The 



"Violet is for faithfulness," 



Shakespeare tells us, and it was no doubt the popular association 

 — this particular "language" of the flower — that led to its ap- 

 propriation by the Buonapartes. Its other chief associations have 

 been with sweet simplicity and modest, retiring humility ; but 

 these characters dwell chiefly in the European species. When 

 Duke Orsino, in " Twelfth Night," declares that the music he 

 listened to 



" Came o'er my ear like the sweet south, 



That breathes upon a bank of violets, 



Stealing, and giving odor," 



17 



