Dog Violet
Viola riviniana
The violet without a scent. The most common, the most overlooked, the one Shakespeare walked past every spring.
Overview
The dog violet is the violet most people mean when they say they have seen wild violets — low, spreading, bright purple-violet flowers in March and April at the edges of paths, under hedges, in old woodland. It is the most common of the British violets by a significant margin. It has no scent, which is what the name means: dog, as in the botanical use of the word to indicate a lesser or scentless version of a more valued plant. The scented violet is the sweet violet (*V. odorata*), grown in perfumery, pressed into sugar, dried in posies. The dog violet does everything the sweet violet does except smell of anything, and is ignored in direct proportion to this deficiency.
Botanical Notes
A perennial, 5–20cm, with a rosette of heart-shaped to kidney-shaped, crenate leaves and solitary flowers on long stalks from March to May. Petals blue-violet, the lower three with darker nectar guides; the spur paler than the petals, notched or straight. Distinguished from sweet violet (*V. odorata*) by the absence of scent, the notched spur, and the absence of creeping stolons. Found in woodland, hedgebanks, grassland, and heathland throughout Britain and Europe, on a wide range of soils. Produces two types of flower: the showy spring flowers (chasmogamous) and small, self-fertilising flowers (cleistogamous) that produce seeds without opening. Related to heartsease (*V. tricolor*), with which it occasionally hybridises.
Lore & History
Shakespeare's bank where the wild thyme blows and violets nod was, in the London of the 1590s, almost certainly a bank of dog violets rather than sweet violets — sweet violets prefer more calcareous soils and are less common in the south-east. The distinction did not concern Shakespeare or his audience. Violets were violets: the flowers of love and sudden death, of Ophelia's garlands and Titania's bower and the graves of the young. In the folk tradition, violets were gathered on the first Sunday in Lent for luck, and a bed of violets around the house was said to attract benevolent spirits. The leaves and flowers were used as a cooling poultice for headaches and as a demulcent for coughs; the flower petals were eaten in salads and crystallised as confectionery. The heart-shaped leaves, read through Doctrine of Signatures, indicated the plant for heart complaints.
Warnings
Safe at culinary and medicinal doses. The plant contains small amounts of saponins and may cause mild gastrointestinal disturbance in very large quantities. The seeds contain an emetic principle and should not be eaten in quantity. No significant toxicity in normal use. Gather leaves and flowers away from roadsides and dog-walked paths.