Violet Flowers

The violet flower may be deepest indigo or palest lavender. It may decorate your garden with the colors of the sun and sky or offer you an artist’s palette of color.

Violet flowers are divided into three groups:
• Nominium, the true violets including wild violets
• Melanium, the pansies
• Chaemelanium, stemless violet flowers

Although each group of violet flowers has distinct characteristics, all violets (viola) have a few traits in common as well. Violet flowers all have five petals (perianth). The uppermost petals stand like sentinels over the flower. The lowest petal is the largest and often colored in vivid contrast to the rest of the flower to attract pollinating insects.

Still, the violet doesn’t rely on the insect kingdom to spread its beauty. After the larger flowers have withered, you’ll see a patch of smaller violet flowers at the base of the plant. Violet flowers are self-pollinating and once seeds have developed the seedpods dry until they burst, catapulting the seeds up to four feet away and ensuring the continuation of violet flowers in the garden. However, research shows that a violet grown from seed may take up to four years to bloom. So leave reseeding to the violet flowers in your garden and add to them with plants purchased in inexpensive flats.

Many violet flowers, especially the common (wild) violets, also propagate through runners, but violet flowers, like most flowers, have a one-track mind. They’ll generally either spread or bloom, so if bloom is important to you, pick off the runners.

Depending on the variety, the violet flower may be a demure three inches high like the johnny-jump-ups or tower to a height of eight inches like many hybrid pansies. In addition, stemless violets are often found in patches under tall grass.

Heart-shaped leaves distinguish true violet flowers, although one wild violet, the round-leafed yellow violet is notable for its round leaves. Many varieties of pansies have rounded and some elongated leaves. One of the traits of stemless violets is that the flower stem contains no leaves at all, which might lead you to wonder why they aren’t called “leafless” violets instead of ‘stemless”. Both leaves and flowers grow from the crown on separate, short stems.

Violets are an early spring flower, depending on location, blooming as early as mid to late March, early April at latest and lasting through mid-summer. Although many cultivars are classified as annuals, violet flower in your garden often “volunteer” to come back for an encore.

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