THE BIRD'S=FOOT VIOLET 
3" 
THE BIRD'S-FOOT VIOLET 
[F iola pedatd) . 
This dainty little hardy flower is unhappily 
difficult to grow, and has remained uncommon 
spite of many importations from North Amer- 
ica. Among the thirty odd kinds found in that 
land of Violets, this is the most beautiful,with 
its leaves cut into narrow segments resembling 
the spreading claws of a bird, and its mauve 
or pale violet flowers, in shape between a Violet 
and a small Pansy. The plant is widely dis- 
tributed but is often local, covering it may 
be hundreds of acres with a dense carpet of 
flowers, and then dis- 
appearing from a large 
tract of country. Its 
season of beauty is 
May and June, later 
than in our British vio- 
lets, while it often 
blooms again in early 
autumn, and flowers of 
the same patch may 
vary in size, shape, and 
colour. In some the petals are broad 
and rounded, and in others reduced 
to a mere strip of colour, which 
may vary from a soft shade of French 
grey through tones of violet to pur- 
ple and deep blue. Pure white 
flowers are scarce, but pallid forms 
are not uncommon in which a 
groundwork of bluish-white is suf- 
fused with pink. The flowers follow 
one another in rich profusion for 
several weeks and last for a con- 
siderable time, the upper petals tilt- 
ed back with a peculiar effect which 
has been happily expressed by one 
writer as that of a shy animal with 
its ears set back. Its capricious nature is seen 
in the fact that even within a short walk of 
its native haunts, and in spots to all appear- 
ance equally favourable, it is often found im- 
possible to establish it with success, so that 
its failure in some of our gardens is not sur- 
prising. It grows best in light sandy or gritty 
soils and in dry places, is found more rarely 
upon limestone, and it avoids wet and shady 
spots. Partial shade does not seem, to hurt it, 
provided the soil be dry, as on roadside banks 
and in the clearings of sunny woodlands, but 
it is quite as frequently found in the open 
upon sunny hillsides, and always thickly 
massed in such spots. 
Even where fairly established in a garden 
it needs care in winter and disappears if left 
to itself. This comes from its dying away in 
winter to a short rootstock from which the 
true roots, which are fine and thread-like, pro- 
ceed. This rootstock varies little in length 
from year to year, for what it gains at one 
end it loses at the other, with a tendency to 
lift itself out of the ground which is mostly 
seen in marshandwood- 
land plants — a provi- 
sion of nature to keep 
pace with deposits of 
falling leaves and wash- 
down soil, which are a 
part of such conditions. 
Like other cultivated 
plants of this nature it 
is always better for an 
annual top-dressing, 
and unless this is given 
to Viola pedata its little 
trunk-like stems finish 
by so growing out of 
the ground as to perish 
during frost. To main- 
tain it in health a dress- 
ing of leaf-soil and sand 
should keep pace with 
its growth, and in this 
way new roots are 
coaxed from the upper 
part of the stem as those 
onthelowerpart perish. 
The plant grows only 
in sandy or gritty soils 
and in open places, with a cool root-run, which 
is best secured in rock-gardens by such a top- 
dressing. Heavy soils should be lightened by 
the addition of leaf-mould and sand, and one 
of the best protections from the loosening 
power of frost is a surfacing of old cocoa-nut 
fibre. The plant often succeeds better in pots 
than in the open air, not so much from any 
tenderness as from the greater care given to 
pot-plants in the way of soil and top-dressing. 
Viola Pedata Bicolor. 
{^Engraved for Flora" from a black-and-white 
drawing by ihe late H. G. Moon.") 
