VIOLA. 



THE ENGLISH FLOWER GARDEN. 



VIOLA. 863 



white or yellow ground, together with 

 centre blotch, and a broad margin of 

 bronzy-red, chestnut, purple, or crimson, 

 or other hue ; the colours must be dense, 

 and the margins distinctly defined. The 

 flowers of the show section should 

 be rounded in form, stout of petal, and of 

 good size, but size is of less importance 

 than the quality of the markings. A fancy 

 Pansy should have a large deep-coloured 

 blotch, covering nearly the whole of the 

 bottom petal and portions of the side 

 petals. The rest of the flower may be 

 white, yellow, buff, red, maroon, purple, 

 crimson, and various other shades, but 

 not so dense as the centre blotch. Some 

 fancy Pansies are flaked or parti-coloured, 

 but all good ones are showy and beautiful 

 beyond the imagination of those who 

 have only seen common strains. Named 

 Pansies come fairly true from seed, but 

 the only way to secure a stock of any 

 particular variety is to take cuttings. 

 When any plant or plants show flowers 

 which it is desirable to perpetuate, the 

 best way is to sacrifice the bloom for the 

 year, pinch the bloom-buds off as fast as 

 they show, feed the plant well with dress- 

 ings of leaf-mould pricked in about the 

 roots, and peg the first shoots down so as 

 to leave the crown of the plant exposed, 

 for fresh healthy shoots to rise from. A 

 few shoots should be taken off when they 

 have made three or four pairs of leaves, 

 and be planted in light soil, sand, and 

 leaf-mould, under a hand-glass, and kept 

 moist and shaded. The pegged-down 

 stems will produce shoots which may be 

 taken off in the same way ; and when 

 well rooted treated as seedlings. 



A good plant combines a profusion of 

 fine flowers with a dwarf, short-stemmed, 

 stocky habit, and the plant when in bloom 

 is a round green bush, with the flowers about 

 \ in. clear of the leaves. It is useless to 

 save seed before a stock of first-class 

 plants is obtained. July is early enough 

 to sow the seed in the south of England, 

 but farther north it may be sown earlier, 

 until in Scotland it should be sown in 

 the spring. 



TUFTED PANSIES. These are hybrids 

 of Pansies and alpine Violets. The term 

 " tufted " has been very properly used to 

 distinguish plants of a spreading habit, 

 like Pinks, Aubrietia, and Alpine Violets, 

 from plants with simple erect stems, like, 

 say, the Stock, Lupine, and Aster. Some- 

 times the two forms of habit occur in the 

 same family ; for instance, there are 

 Violas that are tufted and Violas that are 

 not the German, French, and other 

 Pansies in our gardens do not spread at 



the root as the tufted Pansies do. Plants 

 of this " tufted " habit are often a mass of 

 delicate rootlets even above the ground, 

 so that they are easily increased. Hence 

 when older Pansies die after flowering, 

 those crossed with the alpine species 

 remain, like true perennials, and are easily 

 increased. The term Pansies is a good 

 one in all ways. Without an English 

 name, we shall always have confusion 

 with the Latin name for the name of wild 

 species. To all of these belongs the old 

 Latin name of the genus Viola. It is 

 now agreed by botanists that all cross- 

 bred garden plants including tufted 

 Pansies, of course should have popular 

 English, and not Latin, names. " Bedding 

 Violas " is a vulgar compound of bad 

 English and Latin ; whereas " tufted 

 Pansies " is a good English name with a 

 clear meaning. The Garden, i6th Jan. 

 1892. 



These are the flowers hitherto generally 

 known as Violas and bedding Pansies, 

 and Dr. Stuart, who has raised some of 

 the best and truest of them, says : 

 " Botanically, Violets, Pansies, and 

 Heart's-ease are all the same. Tufted 

 Pansies are crosses from the garden 

 Pansy and Viola cornuta, the latter being 

 the seed-bearer. Pollen from V. cornuta 

 applied to the Pansy produces a common 

 enough form of bedding Pans.y never 

 the tufty root-growth obtained when the 

 cross is the other way. I have proved 

 this by actual hand-crossing. Most 

 \ strains of tufted Pansies are bred the 

 wrong way, and in consequence lack the 

 fibrous tufty root which makes the 

 Violetta strain perennial." 



Having settled the name, the next thing 

 we have to do is select some of the most 

 beautiful of these charming flowers, which 

 are certainly more valuable for our flower 

 gardens than the ordinary Pansy, fine and 

 rich in colour as these are. They are so 

 because the colours are simple and gener- 

 ally pure and true, and because they are 

 most effective when used in groups, and 

 then they are perennial, and may be easily 

 increased and kept true. 



The new race of Tufted Pansies raised 

 by Dr. Stuart, of which Violetta was the 

 first, is a precious addition to this 

 large family, because the flowers are 

 pure in colour and so sweetly scented. 

 The older tufted Pansies were welcome, 

 but all of them had wiry streaks about the 

 eye, not a serious detraction, but it is a 

 gain to have kinds that are quite rayless, 

 as are all of Dr. Stuart's. Violetta the 

 first has small flowers, but all the later 

 varieties have large flowers, and in other 



