Pansies and other Viola species

This is:

A potpourri (below) of violet/pansy/Viola species information as a supplement to other articles.

A plant-based page rather than our usual topic-based page. It's a pivot point, one list of links to ours and others' articles that involve Viola species.

We're just introducing this set of perennial info pages. This page is in process but Aster's page is complete. We hope you'll take a look there and comment. Let us know if the format was useful, share your suggestions, tell us we shouldn't have this page at all... anything helps.

Viola x wittrockiana are the hybrid pansies of every color and color combination imaginable, sometimes with flowers so large that an individual bloom can almost cover an entire clump of one cousin involved in the crosses, the sweet little heartsease or Johnny Jump-up (Viola tricolor).

Below, left: One of the smaller varieties of hardy pansy. Plant them in fall, see them blooming as soon as the first bulb foliage appears, and then remove them when summer heat begins, for "annual" treatment. Leave them to perennialize in a cool spot and the original plant will live a year or two, as well as produce seed that may supply blooming volunteers for a decade.

 Pansy8524.jpg Violet2590.jpg

Above, right: There are so many woodland violets you could dedicate a whole section of a shady garden to them. This is the downy violet, Viola pubescens. Its purple-flowered cousin, the meadow violet (V. cucullata), is similar in appearance but more likely than the downy violet to be able to naturalize as a weed of the lawn.

Read more about violets and pansies (Viola species):

Topic:
     subtopic: Article name/link

Care:
     violets as lawn weeds: