CLXXIV.— THE SWEET VIOLET. 
V io/a odorata L i n ne . 
T HE Family Violace is exceptional among Parietales in having the flower 
generally monosymmetric. It is a small but widespread Family, of varied 
habit, comprising some three hundred species in fifteen genera ; but of the species 
two-thirds belong to the genus Viola. The Family as a whole is characterised by 
scattered, simple, stipulate leaves ; perfect and often showy, pentamerous flowers, 
with a persistent calyx, a hypogynous corolla, often with a spur to the anterior petal ; 
one whorl of stamens with very short filaments, and introrse anthers ; and three 
carpels united into a one-chambered ovary, with parietal placentas and a single 
style, becoming a three-valved, loculicidal capsule. 
Ruskin once suggested a general re-naming of plants, in which feminine names 
were to be reserved for merely beautiful plants, while masculine ones were to be 
bestowed upon those with strongly medicinal powers ; and he selected Viola as an 
appropriate feminine name. Unfortunately for this suggestion — too fanciful to 
commend itself to scientific minds — the genus Viola and some other members 
of the Family have powerful laxative and emetic properties. 
Viola is the only European genus in the Family and is almost cosmopolitan ; 
but belongs mainly to North Temperate regions. The sepals are produced at their 
base into auricle-like projections, so that they appear to be attached above their 
bases ; and the whorl is interrupted by the spur of the anterior petal. This petal, 
which is the largest of the five, forms a landing-place for insect-visitors, whilst its 
spur does not secrete honey, but merely holds that secreted by the tail-like 
appendages of the two anterior stamens. The genus is remarkable not only for the 
considerable range of colour in its flowers — from the primitive white and yellow to 
the higher red, purple, or blue — but more particularly from the occurrence in some 
species of more than one colour in the same flower, these colours belonging in some 
cases to two very distinct series, the one generally dissolved in the cell-sap, while 
the other exists in granules. 
By a sharp curve in the flower-stalk the flower is usually inverted, so that when 
the anthers burst, their pollen can fall into a little cup formed by the processes 
projecting from their apices. The filaments form a very short, broad base, and 
the straight-sided anthers are united by their edges, while their connectives or 
midribs are prolonged into triangular processes round the style. It is from the 
bases of the connectives of the two anterior stamens that the honey-secreting tails 
extend into the spur. The style rising from the apex of the conical ovary is 
dilated above into a club-shaped or rounded mass, the stigmatic surface being 
either the under surface of the bent extremity or the inside of a little hole in the 
bird’s-head-like knob. 
