X LEAPLET8. 



A New Southern Violet. 



In a recent allusion to the geographical distribution and varia- 

 tions of Viola pedaia, I ventured the suggestion that it may in 

 time be shown to consist of a number of definable species, or at 

 least marked varieties (Pitt. v. 126). 



Having indicated as a varietal segregate the plant of the U. S. 

 midland prairie region, and which I shall here and hereafter 

 denominate V, inornaia, I wish to direct attention to a southern 

 ally of the Middle Atlantic, V. pedata, which exhibits charac- 

 ters so pronounced that I wonder no one hitherto has noted 

 them. 



Before proceeding to the diagnosis of specimens I must make 

 mention of the unpublished colored figure of supposed V. pedaia 

 made by Le Conte. As often as I have consulted that figure, so 

 often has the conviction forced itself upon me that his subject 

 must have been a form of V. pedaia unseen by me, at least in a 

 living state ; a plant of remarkably slender habit, seven inches 

 high from the crown of the rootstock to the extremity of the 

 corolla, this last wanting but the sixteenth of an inch of being 

 two inches from tip to tip of the light-blue petals ; these last 

 also wanting a certain firmness of texture in virtue of which 

 the corolla of V. inornaia at least, if not that of true V. pedaia 

 is flat and stiff-looking in its perfect expansion. But in the 

 corolla as represented by Le Conte there is seen over and above 

 their extraordinary size, a certain half -undulating easy grace in 

 the spread of the petals which is foreign to the flower of north- 

 ern and middle country V. pedata. 



It is well known that Le Conte's admirable work on violets 

 was done chiefly in the fleld and at the farther South — the Oaro- 

 linas, Georgia and I believe Alabama, and in our herbaria, 

 among scores of V. pedata sheets — yes, hundreds of them — there 

 are occasional specimens from the Carolinas southward which 

 answer as well as dried specimens may, to this beautiful plate 

 which Le Conte has left; and the specimens disclose one char- 

 acter of importance which none have mentioned, that is, a re- 

 markably prominent spur to the odd petal. This organ is most 

 conspicuous in a sheet of specimens collected on dry gravelly 



