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Viola cornuta

Common name:	Horned Violet	Family:	Violaceae
Author:	L.	Botanical references:	200
Synonyms:
Known Hazards:	None known
Range:	S. W. Europe - Spain, Pyrenees. Occasionally naturalized in Britain.
Habitat:	Mountain pastures.
Edibility Rating (1-5):	3	Medicinal Rating (1-5):	0

Other Possible Synonyms:	From various places across the web, may not be correct. See below.
	V. calcarata[G] V. gracilis[G]
Other Common Names:	From various places around the Web, may not be correct. See below.
	Horned Pansy [L], Horned Violet [H], Johnny-jump-up [H], Tufted Violet [H],
Epithets:	From a Dictionary of Botanical Epithets
	cornuta = with a horn;
Systematics:	From a USDA Plants Database
	Order: Violales. Violet family

Physical Characteristics

An evergreen perennial growing to 0.2m by 0.2m at a fast rate. It is hardy to zone 5. It is in leaf all year, in flower from July to August. The scented flowers are hermaphrodite (have both male and female organs) and are pollinated by Insects. We rate it 3/5 for edibility and 0/5 for medicinal use.

The plant prefers light (sandy), medium (loamy) and heavy (clay) soils and requires well-drained soil. The plant prefers acid and neutral soils. It can grow in semi-shade (light woodland) or no shade. It requires moist soil.

Habitats and Possible Locations

Cultivated Beds, Ground Cover.

Edible Uses

Flowers; Leaves; Tea.

Young leaves and flower buds - raw or cooked[172]. When added to soup they thicken it in much the same way as okra[85, 159].
Flowers - raw[172].
A tea can be made from the leaves[85].

Medicinal Uses

Disclaimer

None known

Other Uses

Ground cover.

A useful ground cover plant for a cool open situation[197]. It needs weeding for the first year or two[197] but then forms an effective weed-excluding cover[233]. Plants are best spaced about 60cm apart each way[208].

Cultivation details

Easily grown in any fertile soil in full sun or partial shade[233]. Prefers a well-drained moisture-retentive soil[188]. Tolerates sandstone and limestone soils but becomes chlorotic if the pH is too high. Prefers a pH between 6 and 6.5[200].
A very ornamental plant, there are many named forms[200]. If the plants are cut back after flowering they will flower again in late summer[208].
All members of this genus have more or less edible leaves and flower buds, though those species with yellow flowers can cause diarrhoea if eaten in large quantities[62, 85, 159]. This species has deep-violet flowers[233].

Propagation

Seed - best sown in the autumn in a cold frame. Sow stored seed in early spring in a cold frame. Prick out the seedlings into individual pots when they are large enough to handle and plant them out in the summer.
Division in the autumn or just after flowering. Larger divisions can be planted out direct into their permanent positions, though we have found that it is best to pot up smaller divisions and grow them on in light shade in a greenhouse or cold frame until they are growing away well. Plant them out in the summer or the following spring.

Scent

Flowers: Fresh: The flowers are sweetly scented[245].

Cultivars

'': There are some named forms for this species, but these have been developed for their ornamental value and not for their other uses. Unless you particularly require the special characteristics of any of these cultivars, we would generally recommend that you grow the natural species for its useful properties. We have, therefore, not listed the cultivars in this database[K].

Suppliers

For more details of plant suppliers please see our Suppliers Page which lists many more places to look.

PFAF Web Pages

This plant is mentioned in the following web pages

Web References

[H] Details of Scandanavian and European Common names in Henriette's names database
[G] Data (Common Names, Uses, Distribution) from the USDA/ARS NPGS's GRIN taxonomic database.
[G] Data (Common Names, Uses, Distribution) from the USDA/ARS NPGS's GRIN taxonomic database.
[HP] Links, Photos, Suppliers from Hortiplex Plant Database

References for Viola gracilis (a possible synonym).

[G] Data (Common Names, Uses, Distribution) from the USDA/ARS NPGS's GRIN taxonomic database.

References for the family Violaceae.

To be included in the Flora of China.

See the PFAF Links Pages for other sources.

Also try Photos and info from the The Plants Database which has 14,000 images.

References

[62] Elias. T. and Dykeman. P. A Field Guide to N. American Edible Wild Plants. Van Nostrand Reinhold 1982 ISBN 0442222009
Very readable.

[85] Harrington. H. D. Edible Native Plants of the Rocky Mountains. University of New Mexico Press 1967 ISBN 0-8623-0343-9
A superb book. Very readable, it gives the results of the authors experiments with native edible plants.

[159] McPherson. A. and S. Wild Food Plants of Indiana. Indiana University Press 1977 ISBN 0-253-28925-4
A nice pocket guide to this region of America.

[172] Schofield. J. J. Discovering Wild Plants - Alaska, W. Canada and the Northwest.
A nice guide to some useful plants in that area.

[188] Brickell. C. The RHS Gardener's Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers Dorling Kindersley Publishers Ltd. 1990 ISBN 0-86318-386-7
Excellent range of photographs, some cultivation details but very little information on plant uses.

[197] Royal Horticultural Society. Ground Cover Plants. Cassells. 1989 ISBN 0-304-31089-1
A handy little booklet from the R.H.S.

[200] Huxley. A. The New RHS Dictionary of Gardening. 1992. MacMillan Press 1992 ISBN 0-333-47494-5
Excellent and very comprehensive, though it contains a number of silly mistakes. Readable yet also very detailed.

[208] Thomas. G. S. Plants for Ground Cover J. M. Dent & Sons 1990 ISBN 0-460-12609-1
An excellent detailled book on the subject, very comprehensive.

[233] Thomas. G. S. Perennial Garden Plants J. M. Dent & Sons, London. 1990 ISBN 0 460 86048 8
A concise guide to a wide range of perennials. Lots of cultivation guides, very little on plant uses.

[245] Genders. R. Scented Flora of the World. Robert Hale. London. 1994 ISBN 0-7090-5440-8
An excellent, comprehensive book on scented plants giving a few other plant uses and brief cultivation details. There are no illustrations.

Readers Comments

Allium vineale

Michael J. Orlove D.I.C., D. Phil (mo42@cornell.edu) Sun, 25 Jul 1999

Universe! Dear Rich, 24-July-1999

I discovered your page with the following URL:

http://www.scs.leeds.ac.uk/pfaf/onions.html

In it you made reference to Allium ursinum, as "wild garlic". I always thought A. ursinum was a rare species in North American woods, and that in Britain and North America the term was usually applied to A vineale. It is also applied to A. canadesne as you know, and also feral populations of A. sativum whose origin in the New world is considered mysterious, Native Americans and early White settlers have both been suspected of introducing it, or possibly it spread on its own without human agency (which I doubt). A. vineale is a tubular leaved species but it is much more closely related to A. ampeloprasum, A. sativum, A., scorodoprasum, A. shaeonoprasum, and A. rosem than to A. cepa, or A. fistulosum. It is the one that is a pest in wheatfields because of the similarity of its bulbils in shape and density to wheat kernels, making mechanical separation very difficult.

what has fascinated me so much about A. vineale is its extreme variation in umbel contents even within a local population. some plants have flowers some bulbils, and some both. When bulbils are few or absent in the umbel, the blossoms are VERY showy --being companulate instead of ovatge.

At such times they are purple instead of green. The very showy form is known as A. V. capsuliferum in reference to its seed capsules. the half and half (bulbils and blossoms) form is called A. V. typicum, and the all bulbil one is A. v. compactgum. Two dark pigmented bulbilforms are also described, one reproduces like compactum, and is called A. v. fuscescens, and the other appears to have viviparous bulbils, but the "sprouts" are actually non-vestigal blades on scale leaves on the bulbils, and is known as A. v. crinitum. crinitum usually has one or 2 ovate flowers per umbel which are lavender or purple in color. All sorts of intermediates exist between these forms. Here in Ithaca fuscescens-like ones have flowers, and crinitum like ones don't or crinitum like ones will have many flowers and viable flowers with many capsuls forming.

I once found a clump of capsuliferum surrounded by a vast field of hundreds and thousands of typicum. Those typicum near the capliferum had purple flowers like the capsuliferum, but the ones farther out had the green flowers typical of typicum. The blossoms of this species are usually visited by tiny ants, sweat bees, or nothing at all, but the capsuliferum where being actively and aggressively visited by large bumblebees (Bombus pennsylvanicus --a large pocket maker, related to the British species B agrorum, but as big as B. terristris). Large paper wasps (Polistes fuscatus) were equally present and interested in the nectar.

An article by Hugo Iltis in the 1940's (it was either in Scientific Monthly or Atlantic Monthly) claimed that this showy capsuliferum form made it as far north a as North Carolina, and . v. typicum was as good as you could get in the Northeast.

Nevertheless this wonderful clump of capsuliferum I found was in the Bronx! that was in 1979, and it continued to persist there until 1983. could this have been global warming? the real question was this capsuliferum more related to the non - sexual nonspecific neighbors around it, or capsuliferum in N. Ccarolina? did it evolve denovo from non-sexual or less sexual forms?

Many biologists say it is a mystery how sex evolved to begin with (the origin - of- sex question" and it is equally a mystery how sex stays in the population and doesn't get selected against (the maintenance - of -sex question). John Maynard Smith (at the University of Susex), Goeffrey Parker (University of Liverpool), and George Williams (University of the State of New York at Stonybrook) have become famous elucidating and trying to solve this mystery. It seems that mating with a stranger may further the fitness of your offspring, but it appears not enough to justify throwing half-of your genes away, as a female does when mating. Plants with both cleistogamous and chasmogamous flowers, like Violo sp., Impatiens capensis (Orange balsam), and I. noli-tangeri (touch-me-not), and the very similar North American I. palida, not to mention the hog peanut, Amphicarpaea xxx, present a similar example of this mystery.

What are your thoughts on this issue? How far north does A. v. capsuliferum make it in Britain? I have found capsuliferum in Interlaken, N. Y. Near Ithaca, N. Y. where Cornell University is, but these ones were not as tall or showy as the ones from the much warmer Bronx. but they were capsuliferum, and made good seed. I have 2 accessions of them, one from a bulbil, and the other from a seed collected from the same umbel in Interlaken.

I have been unable to get them to blossom or even bolt with bulbils in my garden, just getting non scapigqarous growth every spring.

There is some folklore in this country that A. vineale takes on its capsuliferum form when in the vacinity of an underground stream, and dowsers exploit the information provided by the occurrence of the plant in particular instances.

Well I must go now, Please forgive my sloppy typing, I am disabled and it takes me eons to proofread things. Incidentally, are you in &ndndndnd, or Yorkshire?

Some day I will, if I only live, compare the DNA of different forms of A. V. vineale from different locations. the Bronx material seems to be now absent from the original site, I have been back 3 times over the years, and the material I collected now exists as seed in cold storage, but I lack access to it over a technicality (it was shipped to another storage facility instead to Harvard where I was going to grow it out, due to an accident, and it would take a very large sum to recover it, as well as the permission of the person who became its accidental owner who is not willing to release it to me. this is very frustrating.

sincerely yours,

Michael J. Orlove D.I.C., D. Phil

Cross references: Plants: Allium ursinum, Allium canadense, Allium canadense mobilense, Allium sativum, Allium sativum ophioscorodon, Allium vineale, Impatiens capensis, Impatiens noli-tangere, Impatiens pallida. Genera: Viola, Amphicarpaea. Web-pages: Allium Species - the Perennial Onions, PFAF - Allium ursinum, Wild Garlic.

Main Search Page

Bibliography

Plant information taken from the Plants For A Future - Species Database. Copyright (c) 1997-2003.
WEB search engine by Rich Morris - Home Page- Contact Info
Blagdon Cross, Ashwater, Beaworthy, Devon, EX21 5DF, UK.
Website: www.pfaf.org Phone: 0845 458 4719/_44(0) 1208 872963

This page (UK) http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/cgi-bin/pfaf/arr_html?Viola+cornuta
This page (US) http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/cgi-bin/arr_html?Viola+cornuta

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We make no claims of magical effects or supernatural powers for any item in this catalog. In spite of legendary attributes or occult and craft tradition, such items are offered as curios only and beliefs concerning their magical effectiveness are related only for historical interest.