Proserpina, Volume 2. Ruskin John
of the wild herbs of the field and trees of the wood might bring, in time, to the bodily pleasure and mental power of Man.
32. II. VIOLA PSYCHE. Ophelia's Pansy.
The wild heart's-ease of Europe; its proper colour an exquisitely clear purple in the upper petals, gradated into deep blue in the lower ones; the centre, gold. Not larger than a violet, but perfectly formed, and firmly set in all its petals. Able to live in the driest ground; beautiful in the coast sand-hills of Cumberland, following the wild geranium and burnet rose: and distinguished thus by its power of life, in waste and dry places, from the violet, which needs kindly earth and shelter.
Quite one of the most lovely things that Heaven has made, and only degraded and distorted by any human interference; the swollen varieties of it produced by cultivation being all gross in outline and coarse in colour by comparison.
It is badly drawn even in the 'Flora Danica,' No. 623, considered there apparently as a species escaped from gardens; the description of it being as follows:—
"Viola tricolor hortensis repens, flore purpureo et cœruleo, C.B.P., 199." (I don't know what C.B.P. means.) "Passim, juxta villas."
"Viola tricolor, caule triquetro diffuso, foliis oblongis incisis, stipulis pinnatifidis," Linn. Systema Naturæ, 185.
33. "Near the country farms"—does the Danish botanist mean?—the more luxuriant weedy character probably acquired by it only in such neighbourhood; and, I suppose, various confusion and degeneration possible to it beyond other plants when once it leaves its wild home. It is given by Sibthorpe from the Trojan Olympus, with an exquisitely delicate leaf; the flower described as "triste et pallide violaceus," but coloured in his plate full purple; and as he does not say whether he went up Olympus to gather it himself, or only saw it brought down by the assistant whose lovely drawings are yet at Oxford, I take leave to doubt his epithets. That this should be the only Violet described in a 'Flora Græca' extending to ten folio volumes, is a fact in modern scientific history which I must leave the Professor of Botany and the Dean of Christ Church to explain.
34. The English varieties seem often to be yellow in the lower petals, (see Sowerby's plate, 1287 of the old edition), crossed, I imagine, with Viola Aurea, (but see under Viola Rupestris, No. 12); the names, also, varying between tricolor and bicolor—with no note anywhere of the three colours, or two colours, intended!
The old English names are many.—'Love in idleness,'—making Lysander, as Titania, much wandering in mind, and for a time mere 'Kits run the street' (or run the wood?)—"Call me to you" (Gerarde, ch. 299, Sowerby, No. 178), with 'Herb Trinity,' from its three colours, blue, purple, and gold, variously blended in different countries? 'Three faces under a hood' describes the English variety only. Said to be the ancestress of all the florists' pansies, but this I much doubt, the next following species being far nearer the forms most chiefly sought for.
35. III. VIOLA ALPINA. 'Freneli's Pansy'—my own name for it, from Gotthelf's Freneli, in 'Ulric the Farmer'; the entirely pure and noble type of the Bernese maid, wife, and mother.
The pansy of the Wengern Alp in specialty, and of the higher, but still rich, Alpine pastures. Full dark-purple; at least an inch across the expanded petals; I believe, the 'Mater Violarum' of Gerarde; and true black violet of Virgil, remaining in Italian 'Viola Mammola' (Gerarde, ch. 298).
36. IV. VIOLA AUREA. Golden Violet. Biflora usually; but its brilliant yellow is a much more definite characteristic; and needs insisting on, because there is a 'Viola lutea' which is not yellow at all; named so by the garden florists. My Viola aurea is the Rock-violet of the Alps; one of the bravest, brightest, and dearest of little flowers. The following notes upon it, with its summer companions, a little corrected from my diary of 1877, will enough characterize it.
"June 7th.—The cultivated meadows now grow only dandelions—in frightful quantity too; but, for wild ones, primula, bell gentian, golden pansy, and anemone,—Primula farinosa in mass, the pansy pointing and vivifying in a petulant sweet way, and the bell gentian here and there deepening all,—as if indeed the sound of a deep bell among lighter music.
"Counted in order, I find the effectively constant flowers are eight;5 namely,
"1. The golden anemone, with richly cut large leaf; primrose colour, and in masses like primrose, studded through them with bell gentian, and dark purple orchis.
"2. The dark purple orchis, with bell gentian in equal quantity, say six of each in square yard, broken by sparklings of the white orchis and the white grass-flower; the richest piece of colour I ever saw, touched with gold by the geum.
"3 and 4. These will be white orchis and the grass flower.6
"5. Geum—everywhere, in deep, but pure, gold, like pieces of Greek mosaic.
"6. Soldanella, in the lower meadows, delicate, but not here in masses.
"7. Primula Alpina, divine in the rock clefts, and on the ledges changing the grey to purple,—set in the dripping caves with
"8. Viola (pertinax—pert); I want a Latin word for various studies—failures all—to express its saucy little stuck-up way, and exquisitely trim peltate leaf. I never saw such a lovely perspective line as the pure front leaf profile. Impossible also to get the least of the spirit of its lovely dark brown fibre markings. Intensely golden these dark fibres, just browning the petal a little between them."
And again in the defile of Gondo, I find "Viola (saxatilis?) name yet wanted;—in the most delicate studding of its round leaves, like a small fern more than violet, and bright sparkle of small flowers in the dark dripping hollows. Assuredly delights in shade and distilling moisture of rocks."
I found afterwards a much larger yellow pansy on the Yorkshire high limestones; with vigorously black crowfoot marking on the lateral petals.
37. V. VIOLA MONTANA. Mountain Violet.
Flora Danica, 1329. Linnæus, No. 13, "Caulibus erectis, foliis cordato-lanceolatis, floribus serioribus apetalis," i.e., on erect stems, with leaves long heart-shape, and its later flowers without petals—not a word said of its earlier flowers which have got those unimportant appendages! In the plate of the Flora it is a very perfect transitional form between violet and pansy, with beautifully firm and well-curved leaves, but the colour of blossom very pale. "In subalpinis Norvegiæ passim," all that we are told of it, means I suppose, in the lower Alpine pastures of Norway; in the Flora Suecica, p. 306, habitat in Lapponica, juxta Alpes.
38. VI. VIOLA MIRABILIS. Flora Danica, 1045. A small and exquisitely formed flower in the balanced cinquefoil intermediate between violet and pansy, but with large and superbly curved and pointed leaves. It is a mountain violet, but belonging rather to the mountain woods than meadows. "In sylvaticis in Toten, Norvegiæ."
Loudon, 3056, "Broad-leaved: Germany."
Linnæus, Flora Suecica, 789, says that the flowers of it which have perfect corolla and full scent often bear no seed, but that the later 'cauline' blossoms, without petals, are fertile. "Caulini vero apetali fertiles sunt, et seriores. Habitat passim Upsaliæ."
I find this, and a plurality of other species, indicated by Linnæus as having triangular stalks, "caule triquetro," meaning, I suppose, the kind sketched in Figure 1 above.
39. VII. VIOLA ARVENSIS. Field Violet. Flora Danica, 1748. A coarse running weed; nearly like Viola Cornuta, but feebly lilac and yellow in colour. In dry fields, and with corn.
Flora Suecica, 791; under titles of Viola 'tricolor' and 'bicolor arvensis,' and Herba Trinitatis. Habitat ubique in sterilibus arvis: "Planta vix datur in qua evidentius perspicitur generationis opus, quam in hujus cavo apertoque stigmate."
It is quite undeterminable, among present botanical instructors, how far this plant is only a rampant and over-indulged condition of the true pansy (Viola Psyche); but my own scholars are to remember that the true pansy is full purple and blue with golden centre; and that the disorderly field varieties of it, if indeed not scientifically distinguishable, are entirely separate from the wild flower by their scattered form and faded or altered colour. I follow the Flora Danica in giving them as a
Nine; I see that I missed count of P. farinosa, the most abundant of all.
"A feeble little quatrefoil—growing one on the stem, like a Parnassia, and looking like a Parnassia that had dropped a leaf. I think it drops one of its own four, mostly, and lives as three-fourths of itself, for most of its time. Stamens pale gold. Root-leaves, three or four, grass-like; growing among the moist moss chiefly."