Tag Archives: Violaceae

More Flowers From Ferry Hill

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Here are a few more photos of flowers seen in early April along the Potomac River near Sharpsburg, Maryland.

 

 

two-leaved miterwort, Mitella diphylla (Saxifragaceae) [right and below]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

downy yellow violet, Viola pubescens var. scabriuscula  (Violaceae)

 

 

 

blue cohosh, Caulophyllum thalictroides  (Berberidaceae)

 

 

 

 

rue anemone, Thalictrum thalictroides (Ranunculaceae) [with a side of early saxifrage, Micranthes virginiensis]

 

 

star chickweed, Stellaria pubera (Caryophyllaceae)

 

 

 

 

toadshade, Trillium sessile (Melanthiaceae)

 

 

 

 

squirrel corn, Dicentra canadensis (Papaveraceae)

 

 

 

wild blue phlox, Phlox divaricata (Polemoniaceae)

 

 

 

spreading rockcress, Arabis patens (Brassicaceae); G3 (globally rare/local), S3 in Maryland

 

 

 

 

spring beauty, Claytonia virginica (Montiaceae)

Palmata, Pedata

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Viola pedata

Last spring my friend B discovered a small population of bird’s foot violet (Viola pedata) near Great Falls.  This was exciting because it was the first reported sighting of the species in Montgomery County since the mid-20th century*.

Viola palmata

I went to the location a few days later and took some pictures. A few days after that, in a nearby but different location, I found a patch of similar-looking plants, but they had finished blooming. I had to wait a year to follow up…

…which I did last week. That second patch was good news/bad news: it was in full bloom, but it wasn’t bird’s foot violet. It was Viola palmata, aka early blue violet or wood violet.

Violet identification can be tricky, but V. palmata and V. pedata are pretty easy to tell apart. Here’s a quick primer.

Viola pedata

Have a look at the leaves: in both species they are dissected. V. pedata leaves will have anywhere from 5 to 11 narrow lobes.

Viola palmata

The leaves of Viola palmata are more variable. Two leaf types are shown here, one with lobes somewhat wider than V. pedata‘s, and the other with fewer, broader lobes.

Viola palmata

Viola palmata

a small colony of V. palmata in bloom.

Typically it’s better to ID species from flowers rather than leaves, so let’s look at those:

Viola pedata is on the left.  Note that it has an orange center, while Viola palmata, on the right, has hairs in the center (click on the pictures to zoom in).  V. pedata typically has two darker upper petals, but not always.

Viola pedata

In my (rather limited) experience, V. palmata is much more common than V. pedata in the Maryland piedmont.  Both species are found in dry, rocky woodlands, but V. palmata likes moister soils, too.  The stand that B found is on a sandy rock outcropping in the Gold Mine Tract.  If you find bird’s foot violet anywhere in the Maryland Piedmont, please leave a comment here!

*per Maryland Biodiversity Project

Today I Am…

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Random pictures of small blue things (and purple things), because once again I haven’t the time to write meaningful content.

I don’t know if this is a color variation of common blue violet (Viola sororia) or something else. There is a well-known white form, sometimes called Confederate violet, but it doesn’t look quite like this one. Violets are notoriously promiscuous so who knows. The color is remarkably consistent every year. I’ve only seen them at Rachel Carson Conservation Park.

If you see a blue violet that stands well above the level of its leaves, and if it’s growing in or very near to open water, then it’s probably marsh blue violet (Viola cucullata).

 

 

Wild geranium (Geranium maculatum), also at RCCP. These two were somewhat bluer than is typical.

 

 

 

Virginia spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana) There aren’t many three-petaled flowers around.

 

 

 


Only one of the seven species of Oxalis found in Maryland is an alien, but some of the others can be awfully weedy. I like them anyway. I’ve been on the hunt for Oxalis colorea, previously overlooked here until a fellow botanerd found it [hi, Bill]. If I make any progress I’ll write about it. In the meantime, though, you just can’t call violet woodsorrel (Oxalis violacea) a weed.

Even the leaves are charming.

 

 

 

 

Purpurea

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Continuing with pretty pictures during this cold season. It’s a thin line between blue and purple. Color is a continuum. Color is in the eye of the beholder. If some of these look more blue or pink than purple, well, c’est la vie.

Triodanis perfoliata (Venus’ looking glass; Campanulaceae)

Look for this annual forb growing in rocky places where there isn’t much competition from other plants. It generally blooms from about mid May into early June here in the Maryland piedmont.

Clinopodium vulgare (wild basil; Lamiaceae)

A perennial forb with circumboreal distribution. Look for the flowers in the height of summer.

 

 

Cunila origanoides (common dittany; Lamiaceae)

A perennial native to North America, and found mostly in the mid West and mid Atlantic. It blooms in late summer.

 

Elephantopus caroliniana (Carolina elephant’s foot; Asteraceae)

A rather weedy-looking plant with a fascinating inflorescence. Click on the picture and look closely; you’ll see that this is actually four disk flowers, each with a five-lobed corolla. The species is native to the southeastern US (Maryland is almost as far north as it goes). It blooms in late summer.

 

Eutrochium purpureum (sweet joe-pye weed; Asteraceae).

The joe-pye weeds (formerly Eupatorium species) are perennials that love wet places, but this particular species tolerates drier soils and is a great native for the home garden, with dramatic heads of colorful flowers towering above most other forbs. And it attracts butterflies. Blooms in late summer.

Mentha arvensis (field mint; Lamiaceae)

Another mint-family plant with circumboreal distribution. Another late-summer bloomer.

 

 

Mimulus alatus (winged monkeyflower; Phrymaceae)

Watch for this wetland plant and its almost identical cousin M. ringens var. ringens (Allegheny monkeyflower) blooming in early to mid summer.

 

Monarda fistulosa (wild bergamot; Lamiaceae)

The mint family sure is represented well here. Look for it in mid summer, possibly covered in bees and butterflies.

 

Phlox divaricata (woodland phlox, wild blue phlox; Polemoniaceae)

As you can see this flower ranges from almost white through lighter and stronger shades of blue and purple. They bloom at about the same time as Virginia bluebells. Bluebells grow in the floodplain while this phlox grows just upland of the floodplain, in still moist (but not wet) woodland soils.

Physostegia virginiana (obedient plant; Lamiaceae)

Yet another mint family mid summer bloomer. Watch for it on rocky outcrops and gravel bars in the Potomac.

 

 

 

 

Ruellia caroliniensis (hairy wild petunia; Acanthaceae)

In Maryland this species is found mostly in the Coastal Plain; in the piedmont it’s restricted to a few sites near the Potomac River (as far as I know – please leave a comment if you know otherwise). Watch for it in late spring and early summer.

Trichostema dichotomum (forked bluecurls; Lamiaceae)

Blue or purple, or splitting the difference? Whatever. This is a most striking plant, one of those OMG finds. Well it was for me, anyway. What a lurid color. Late summer, dry soils, open areas. Yow.

Verbena hastata (blue vervain, swamp verbena, Verbenaceae)

As one of the common names suggests, you’ll find this in wetlands, blooming anywhere from late June to mid August. This is an extreme closeup; the plants are rather tall but the inflorescences rather small.

 

 

Vernonia noveboracensis (New York ironweed; Asteraceae)

All ray flowers with strongly exserted stigmas, no disk flowers. Very tall plant, wispy appearance. Likes wet soils. Blooms in mid to late summer.

 

Viola palmata (early blue violet, three-loved violet; Violaceae)

Violet taxonomy is in flux, and violet species can be difficult to differentiate. This one is relatively easy because of the unusual leaf shape, although even that can be highly variable. Look for it in mid spring in drier woodlands.

A Vexing Violet, or, How to Overthink Identification

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Ah, violets. How can something so small, delicate, and beautiful be so vexing?

Last year I wrote about Viola blanda (sweet white violet), then updated my post to say that the plant pictured might be Viola primulifolia (primrose-leaved violet). When I went back to Rachel Carson Conservation Park last week, my third goal was to find these plants and get a definitive ID.

I’m so naive.

I did find a nice stand of them, in the same place where I saw a single plant last year. With Weakley’s Flora* downloaded to iBooks on my iPhone, I perched on a rock near the trail, took out my hand lens and measuring tape, and got to work.

First step: read about the genus.

Identification notes: Viola has presented numerous problems in taxonomy, distribution, and identification…

Oh, yay. But, I knew this.

Particularly troublesome are the so- called “acaulescent blue violets”, including V. sororia, V. sagittata, V. palmata, V. septemloba, etc. They may be difficult to identify due to morphological overlap, or trying to key plants without mature leaves; in some instances hybridization may be suspect. Leaf maturity is an important feature to recognize–the earliest 1-2 leaves produced in most of these taxa are generally ovate-cordate in outline and may not display characteristic lobing, toothing, or pubescence until more mature leaves are produced, 1-2 weeks later. Specimens thus collected early in the flowering period can present the botanist with a perplexing series of plants that do not key cleanly. [emphasis mine]

Interesting, and worth keeping in mind about leaf morphology and maturity, but I was looking at white violets, not blue. So continuing…

A second troublesome group contains the small white violets, including V. blanda, V. incognita, and V. macloskeyi. These taxa have been dealt with in various ways, but resist a wholly satisfactory treatment, due to apparent hybridization…

So now what? Soldier on, use the keys. There are four of them. Four keys for a single genus.

Key C – Acaulescent Violets with stolons and white (or rarely blue) flowers

That’s the one. “Acaulescent” means “without stem”. This amuses me, because violets have stems. A major distinguishing feature among violets is that some have only basal leaves, while others have caulescent leaves (leaves on the flowering stems). I’m not sure why basal-only is termed “acaulescent”, but whatever. These plants had white flowers and no stem leaves, so Key C it was.

First couplet:

1. Flowers generally blue…
1. Flowers white…

Hey, this is easy! Second couplet:

2. Leaf blades > 1.5× as long as broad.
2. Leaf blades < 1.5× as long as broad.

Got the measuring tape, checked a few leaves… uh oh. Which leaves to measure? Each plant had several low leaves and a single larger, more upright leaf. Is that the mature leaf I should be measuring? “Leaf maturity is an important feature to recognize…” Oh, right. So I measured a few mature leaves and found that on average, they are exactly one and a half times as long as they are broad. (A few are very slightly more, and a few are very slightly less.)

The thing about nature is that it refuses to be put into neat categories. Keys are great, but they can never account for every variation. When using keys the rule is: examine multiple specimens and go with the best fit, even if it isn’t a precise fit. But I really didn’t know where to go here, so I decided to follow both leads to see what happens.

The first line of the couplet above leads to

3. Leaf blades ovate-lanceolate to ovate-triangular, 1.5-2× as long as broad, the base broadly rounded to subtruncate…  V. primulifolia 
3. Leaf blades lanceolate to linear-lanceolate, 3-15× as long as broad, base narrowly cuneate and somewhat decurrent onto petiole.

This had me scratching my head. For the most part the leaves were more ovate-triangular (first line), but the bases were more often cuneate and decurrent (second line). Since neither of these descriptions quite fit, but the first one was closer, I kept it in mind as a possibility and went back to the second line of couplet two (leaf blades less than one and a half times long as broad):

5. Leaf blades completely glabrous (petioles may be villous); [of wet, acidic seepage or swampy woods, often with Sphagnum]…   V. pallens
5. Leaf blades pubescent, at least on the upper surface of the basal lobes; [of wet to more mesic situations]

Most of the leaves were slightly to very pubescent. Also, these plants were found in a wet area, so the habitat description works, too. I chose the second line, which led to:

6. Lateral petals glabrous within; petioles and peduncles usually reddish-tinged; leaf apex acute; basal lobes of the leaf often overlapping; pubescence of the upper leaf surface often restricted to the basal lobes; [of mesic, often nutrient-rich forests]… V. blanda
6. Lateral petals bearded within; petioles and reduncles [sic] green; leaf apex obtuse to rounded; basal lobes of the leaf not overlapping; pubescence of the upper leaf surface usually widespread; [of mesic to wet situations]… V. incognita

The lateral petals were very slightly bearded, not glabrous, but the petioles and peduncles were reddish-tinged; the leaf tips were acute, but the basal lobes of the leaves were not overlapping. The pubescence was more widespread on some plants than others.

At this point I didn’t know what to think, so I turned to the internet and a few books to get descriptions of V. primulifolia and V. blanda. I’ll spare you the details, other than to say that according to Illinois Wildflowers, V. primulifolia sometimes has slightly bearded petals.

In the end it came down to looking at pictures. From all that I saw, the mature leaves of these plants look a lot more like V. primulifolia. The final check was location: are the two species found in Montgomery County? V. primulifolia is, V. blanda is not.

So with the information available and my understanding of the terminology, I’ve reached the conclusion that these are primrose-leaved violet.

Going through an exercise like this is tedious, but I do it in part to teach myself botany. How else can we learn but to question everything? I welcome discussion in the comments section, especially if you think I got something wrong.

*Weakley’s Flora can be downloaded from the University of North Carolina Herbarium website