376 VIOLET. 



fibres, and sending out from the crown slender, creeping, and 

 rooting scions. The leaves are all radical, on long, smooth 

 footstalks, roundish-cordate, crenate, nearly glabrous, dark 

 green above, paler beneath, and pubescent on the nerves ; with 

 radical, membranous, lanceolate, serrate stipulae. There is no 

 proper stem, but the flowers are solitary and pendant on a 

 scape or peduncle, which is filiform, nearly quadrangular be- 

 low, longer than the leaves, and furnished with two small lan- 

 ceolate opposite bracteae situated above the middle. The calyx 

 consists of five ovate-oblong, obtuse, glabrous, persistent se- 

 pals, protuberant at the base, and of a purplish hue. The 

 corolla of a deep purplish blue colour or white, is composed of 

 five unequal obovate rounded petals*, of which the two late- 

 ral are marked with a hairy line towards the base, the lower 

 one slightly keeled, and produced at the base into a conical, 

 obtuse, incurved spur. The stamens are inserted on a five- 

 toothed torus, with short filaments, supporting connivent, two- 

 celled anthers, terminated by an ovate membrane of an orange 

 colour ; the two superior filaments are produced beyond the 

 anthers into subulate, compressed, greenish appendages, which 

 intrude within the spur. The germen is superior, conical, 

 supporting a clavate twisted style, terminated by a hooked 

 stigma. The fruit is a turgid obtuse capsule, three-angled, 

 with one cell and three valves, which contract elastically and 

 eject the seeds. The seeds are numerous, turbinate, glabrous, 

 whitish. Plate 46, fig. 2, (a) anthers; (b) pistil; (c) fruit; 

 (d) capsule, opened to show the seeds. 



The Sweet Violet, so universally admired for its odour and 

 beauty, is a well known inhabitant of our woods, pastures, and 

 hedge-banks, flowering in March and April. 



Various have been the etymologies proposed for the word 

 Viola. The most probable is from the Greek to», so called 

 from its being the fabled food of Io, a favourite of Jupiter. 

 The tovf of Dioscorides is doubtless our Sweet Violet. 



* The later flowers are often destitute of petals, but produce perfect seed. 

 The white-flowered kind is by some reckoned a distinct species, as the late- 

 ral petals are often destitute of the hairy line observed in the purple kind. 



t " Viola (<«») folium habet hederaceo minus, tenuius atque nigrius alio- 

 qui haud ita dissimile. Cauliculus a radice medius prodit, in quo flosculus 

 perquam suaviter olens, purpureus. Locis nascitur opacis et asperis." Lib. 

 iv. c. 122. 



