56 Popular Studies of California Wild Flowers 



Violets (Violaceae) 



Johnny- Jump-Up and Others 



By Roland Rice 



Of the myriads of wonderful wild flower things which carpet 

 the fields and woods of California in the springtime, there is one 

 family whose members are always recognized by their surpassing 

 loveliness and dainty ways ; their beauty always makes one pause ; 

 we have but one genus of this plant, Viola, which is an old Latin 

 word, first used by Virgil. 



According to Greek legends, the violet was first created by 

 Jupiter, and it was later dedicated to Venus, being much appreciated 

 by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The violet was called "lo" by 

 the Greeks and was as cherished a device of the Ionic Athenians as 

 are the Fleur-de-lis of France and the Rose of England. 



In the Middle Ages, the flowers were given by ladies to their 

 knights as symbols of faithfulness, and later, the first Napoleon and 

 his followers adopted it as their secret emblem. Napoleon was 

 styled "Pierre La Violette," and the flowers worn by a Frenchman 

 denoted faithfulness of the wearer to the fallen chieftain's cause. 



Because violet is the name of a lavender or purple shade, many 

 people think that this is the predominating color of the flowers ; but 

 this is not the case. In California, there are quite as many yellow 

 varieties, as well as those having varied colors. Indeed, all violets 

 are said to have once been white; one variety, some legends say, 

 became purple because the forlorn and sorrowing Venus in seeking 

 Adonis was wounded by an impious thorn which pierced her foot. 

 The violets, with reverence and sympathy, bowed their pallid heads 

 and caught the drops of divine blood. Shakespeare gives another 

 version, as told by Oberon, King of the Fairies, to Puck, wherein 

 he relates that Cupid loosed a love-shaft at a vestal virgin : 

 "Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell ; 

 It fell upon a little ivestern flower 

 Before, milk-white; now purple with love's wound 

 And maidens call it 'Love-in-Idleness.' }: 



It was Shakespeare alone who could create the exquisite pas- 

 sage to be found in "Twelfth Night," where, while listening to the 

 plaintive music, the Duke desires : 



"That strain again; it had a dying fall; 

 Oh, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south 

 That breathes upon a bank of violets, 

 Stealing and giving odor." 



Shakespeare, as the chief of poets, has immortalized the flower 

 in many ways and mostly as a symbol of modesty and maidenhood. 

 He puts Ophelia in her grave with the words: "Lay her i' the 

 earth, and from her fair and unpolluted flesh, may violets spring." 



Almost every poet has indulged his fancy with the pretty 

 flowers. Keats often wrote of "violet beds nestling in sylvan 

 bowers." Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Goethe, Herrick, Tennyson, 



