Violaceae

Violets and pansies

From Streeter et al., (2016), 'Family key':

"Flowers strongly irregular, blue, yellow or white; 5 sepals with short appendage below point of attachment; 5 petals, free, the lowest with a backward-pointing spur; violets with heart-shaped leaves and narrow stipules; pansies with lobed leaf-like stipules"

For the specimen(s) below, hover over image in gallery for description and select for a full screen preview.

ID: 048

Date: 11 Jun 2024

Locality: St. Michaels and All Angels churchyard, Finmere

Location (Lat/Long): 51.993, -1.074

Landscape/habitat: In a churchyard, by the side of the church building.

Identification notes: I was looking for a Common Dog-violet Viola riviniana, as this is the most common violet. To do so I had looked at records on nbn atlas (National Biodiversity Network Trust, 2024) and found historic ones at this site so I thought I would come and see if there were any still here.

I didn't see any flowers so identification is pretty tricky. The grass looked to have been mown at some point and I could see the stem to this plant had been cut. I spotted the heart-shaped leaf and took a closer look.

Pl@ntNet (CIRAD et al., 2024) indicated it could be Sweet Violet Viola odorata (32% match) with a photo of just the leaf, so checking the description in Streeter et al. (2016, p. 166), along with my observations:

'Perennial with long, creeping stolons, rooting at ends' (If we look at my photo, I can see that the plant has a stolon, highlighted)
'Leaves and flower stalks emerge from basal tuft' (It does look a little like a tuft where the leaves and flower stalks emerge, comparing my photo to the illustration it does look similar)
'blades thinly hairy, petioles with short reflexed hairs' (The petioles do look to have short hairs, I cannot judge whether they are reflexed or not though).
Habitat of 'Wood margins, scrub, shady hedge banks, chiefly on calcareous soils' (This was located on a shady side/corner of the church, so not an unreasonable place to assume it might be).

When I submitted more photos, of multiple leaves and the stolon, to iRecord (Biological Records Centre, 2024) , I received a 93% match, so if I had to make an ID that is what it would be, although there is some uncertainty around it. Unfortunately there is no flower to make a comparison, or to see if it smelled sweetly!

Name: Sweet Violet, Viola odorata

Sweet violet Viola odorata - in shady corner of churchyard

Sweet violet Viola odorata - heart shaped leaf

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References

Biological Records Centre (2024) iRecord. Available at: https://irecord.org.uk/ (Accessed: 14 May 2024).

CIRAD, INRAE, INRIA and IRD (2024) Pl@ntNet. Available at: https://plantnet.org/en/ (Accessed: 11 June 2024).

National Biodiversity Network Trust (NBN Trust) (2024) Species search. Available at: https://species.nbnatlas.org/ (Accessed: 15 May 2024).

Streeter, D., Hart-Davies, C., Hardcastle, A., Cole, F. and Harper, L. (2016) Collins wild flower guide. Revised and updated 2nd edition. edn. London: William Collins.