[Sidenote: =Yellow Mountain Violet=
_Vìola venòsa_
=Yellow
Spring
Northwest and Utah=]
An attractive kind, usually about three inches tall, with almost
smooth leaves, often with purplish veins, with blunt tips and margins
obscurely or coarsely toothed, or almost toothless, and with long
leafstalks. The flowers are usually less than half an inch long, with
clear yellow petals, more or less tinged with purple on the outside,
the lower petal usually with several, purplish-black veins, the two
side petals with one or two veins. This has no scent, the capsule is
roundish and hairy, and the cleistogamous flowers are abundant. It
grows on dry mountainsides and is very variable both as to flower and
foliage and much smaller at great altitudes, the whole plant being not
more than an inch high. The drawing is of a Utah plant.
[Sidenote: =Canada Violet=
_Vìola Canadénsis_
=Pale-violet, white
Spring, summer
West, etc., except Cal.=]
This is quite tall, the slender, rather weak stems being sometimes
over a foot high, with smooth leaves, often with some hairs on the
veins of the under side. The flowers, over half an inch across, with
a short petal-spur, are almost white, delicately veined with purple,
yellow in the throat and tinged with violet or purple on the outside.
Occasionally they are pure-white all over and sometimes sweet-scented.
The capsule is oval and smooth. This is common in eastern mountain
woods, and to eastern eyes looked far from home when we found it in
Walnut Canyon in Arizona.
[Sidenote: =Pale Mountain Violet=
_Vìola adúnca var. glàbra_
=Pale-blue
Spring, summer
Utah=]
This is small and low, about three inches high, with leafy stems,
forming a clump of small, smooth, more or less toothed leaves, with
blunt tips, dark green on the upper side and paler on the under, with
two, quite large, fringed bracts at the bases of the leaf-stalks, and
two, small, fringed bracts on the flower-stems, half an inch below
the flower. The flowers are scentless, measure less than half an inch
across, and are pale-blue or almost white, with veins of dark blue on
the lower petal and tufts of white, fuzzy hairs inside, at the base of
the side petals, the spur purplish. This grows in mountain canyons, at
a height of five thousand to nine thousand feet, and is very small at
great altitudes.
[Illustration: Yellow Mountain Violet--V. venosa.
Canada Violet--Viola Canadensis.