downy yellow violet

Downy yellow violetrises on one or two stems.

There are usually no basal leaves, sometimes there is just a single basal leaf. The leaf blades are egg-shaped to kidney-shaped and have a broadly angled to straight (truncate) base. The upper and lower leaf surfaces are densely covered with minute, fine, short hairs, especially along the main veins. The leaf margin has 15 to 23 teeth per side. The upper leaf stipules are herbaceous, broadly egg-shaped, and broadly angled at the tip.

The flowering stem is conspicuously hairy.

Yellow

Smooth yellow violet (Viola eriocarpa) rises on usually three or more stems. There are usually 1 to 4 basal leaves. The leaf blades are heart-shaped to broadly egg-shaped and have a heart-shaped base. The upper and lower leaf surfaces are hairless or sparsely hairy. The leaf blade has 8 to 15 teeth per side. The upper leaf stipules are semi-herbaceous, ance-shaped, and narrowly angled at the tip. The flowering stem is hairless or has hairs in longitudinal lines. Smooth yellow violet ismuch more widespread and much more common.

Dry. Woods, forests.

April to June

Sources

4, 7, 28, 29, 30.

Native

A survey of violets (Russel, 1965) argued that Viola pubescens and Viola eriocarpa intergraded wherever the two species occurred together. For this reason, he combined them as subspecies, and he renamed Viola eriocarpa to Viola pubescens var. eriocarpa. Following that publication, virtually all floras and treatments used the name Viola pubescens var. scabriuscula. Several treatments between 1995 and 2001 synonymized the two species as Viola pubescens.

A recent taxonomic treatment of the genus Viola reviewed just the species occurring in northeastern North America, specifically those species included in the second edition of Gleason and Cronquist’s Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada. Among the many changes suggested by the authors was separating Viola pubescens var. pubescens and Viola pubescens var. scabriuscula as distinct species.

Plant

Flower

Leaves

Downy Yellow Violet
DianesDigitals

Downy Yellow Violet (Viola pubescens)
Andree Reno Sanborn