VIOLET FAMILY 



color. They usually have three colors, mostly blue and purple, 

 white or yellow, but in different varieties one of the colors strongly 

 predominates. 



Gerard, writing in 1587, pictures the Heart's-ease or Viola tri- 

 color with small, violet-Kke flowers, the petals standing apart from 

 each other. Of the Upright Heart's-ease he says: "The stalks 

 are weake and tender, whereupon grow flowers in form and 

 figure Uke the violet and for the most part of the same bignesse, of 

 three sundry colors, whereof it tooke the symame Tricolor, that is 

 to say, purple, yellow and white or blew; by reason of the beauty 

 and braverie of which colours they are very pleasing to the eye, for 

 smel they have little or none at all. The seed is contained in small 

 knaps of the bignesse of a Tare, which come forth after the floures 

 be fallen, and do open of themselves when the seeds be ripe. The 

 root is nothing else but, as it were, a bundle of threddy things." 



Shakespeare has immortalized the Pansy in the speech of 

 Ophelia: 



There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray you, love, remember : and 

 there is pansies, that's for thoughts. — "Hamlet," Act IV, Sc. 2. 



And again, in "Midsummer Night's Dream," Oberon sends 

 Puck to gather the flower: 



Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell: 



It fell upon a little western flower, 



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



And maidens call it love-in-idleness. — Act II, Sc. 1. 



That this flower early won the hearts of the English people is 

 evidenced by the many caressing names it possesses: — Heart's- 

 ease, Love-in-idleness, Pansy, Violet, Cuddle-Me-to-You, Three- 

 Faces-Under-a-Hood, Herb-Trinity, Johnny- Jump-Up. 



The first improved Pansies appeared in England, whose cool, 

 moist climate is well adapted to their growth, and for many years 

 the English types were the best in the world. In the middle seven- 

 ties three French specialists, Bugnot, Gassier, and Trimardeau, 

 devoted themselves to the development of the Pansy and the re- 

 suhs were a revelation to horticulturists. They produced the race 



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