Description :

• Herbs, rarely shrublets, erect or trailing and rooting at nodes
• Leaves petiolate, entire or usually serrate; stipules persistent, minute to foliaceous
• Flowers irregular, usually solitary, axillary, curved downward; pedicels long, thin, inarticulate, 2-bracteate
• Sepals subequal, produced at base below point of insertion
• Petals unequal, obovate, anterior one spurred or saccate
• Stamens with very short free filaments; anthers usually coherent in a ring around ovary, 2 lower each bearing a recurved, caudate, nectariferous appendage protruded into spur of anterior petal; anther connectives produced apically into a petaloid appendage
• Ovary unilocular with 3 parietal placentas, multi-ovulate; style variously shaped; stigma terminal
• Capsule 3-valved
• Seeds globose, pointed above and below, with a spongy aril
• x = 5, 6 (7, 8, 11, 13, 17, 23, 29) (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Viola L.
  • Linnaeus: 933 (1753)
  • Sonder: 73 (1860)
  • Robson: 258 (1960)
  • Valentine : 281 (1968)
  • Obermeyer: 50 (1976)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 300, cosmopolitan but mainly north temperate
• Southern Africa : * Viola odorata L. (Violet) and * V. tricolor L. (Pansy or Heartsease) are popular garden plants, and forms of the latter have been recorded as adventives
  • Two closely related species occur in tropical Africa, one of these extending south to the Northern Province (Soutpansberg) and Mpumalanga (Woodbush); one species with two varieties is endemic in the Cape winter-rainfall region