232 
The Ohio Naturalist. 
[Vol.XI, No. 2, 
VIOLA HIRSUTULA IN OHIO. 
Robert F. Griggs. 
Every spring for several years past the writer has observed a 
blue violet in the vicinity of Sugar Grove to which he was unable 
to assign a name. But the plant was so common and so clearly 
distinct from all of the other violets of the region that he supposed 
that his trouble arose from the difficulty of the genus rather than 
from any rarity of the plant itself. Finally in 1910 particular 
care was taken to collect perfect specimens both at flowering time 
and in early summer and from a study of these it was evident 
that the plant was Viola hirsutula Brainerd, better known as 
Viola villosa Walt., but not, according to Brainerd, Walter’s 
plant. This determination has since been verified at the Gray 
Herbarium. The mature plants are entirely similar to those in 
the herbarium but those in flower vary somewhat from the usual 
form in a tendency toward lobing at the base of the leaf which while 
occasionally seen in the herbarium specimens is sufficiently pro- 
nounced in almost all of the Sugar Grove plants to make it diffi- 
cult to decide which section of the key to follow in their deter- 
mination. This tendency is confined to the youngest leaves and 
in mature plants the leaves are all cordate. In addition to the 
characters given in the manual there is a very distinctive field 
character which should be included in the descriptions. This 
is the purple veining of the upper surfaces of the leaves which 
together with their mottling of different shades of green renders 
the plants very beautiful for their foliage alone. In the herbarium 
specimens this color fades and becomes indistinct but in many 
cases it is still visible and when present is useful for diagnostic 
purposes. 
The hitherto known range of Viola hirsutula is: Southern New 
York and New Jersey to Florida and Louisiana, both in the moun- 
tains and on the coastal plain. The present station is about two 
hundred miles west of the most westerly locality previously 
reported, namely in the vicinity of Pittsburgh, where it is reported 
by Shafer. At Sugar Grove it is exceedingly abundant on the 
uplands where it occupies much the same place in the plant associa- 
tions that the common blue violet fills on the bottomlands. It 
is especially a plant of old fields and pine barrens though it is 
also to be found along with many other of the upland plants in 
pastures where the land is more fertile. From the abundance of 
the species in this region and the widespread occurrence of similar 
habitats over all of Southeastern Ohio, the writer is led to believe 
that when once it is recognized by the botanists it will be found 
growing almost throughout this region. 
