FIELD VIOLET
Scientific Name: Viola arvensis Murr.
Other Names: violette des champs, European field pansy, Field pansy, Wild pansy, pensée des champs
Family: Violet Family (Violaceae)
General Description: Annual or possibly living for two years, reproducing only by seed.
Habitat: Field violet occurs throughout most of Ontario in gardens, cereal crops, pastures, abandoned fields and waste places.
Seedlings
- Leaves are very small
- Long stalks
- Rounded blades
- A few shallow teeth
- Very small stipules
Stems
- Erect and short or much-branched and somewhat spreading
- Up to 30 cm (12 in.) long
- Somewhat fleshy or succulent
- With or without fine hair
Leaves
- Alternate (1 per node)
- Larger
- Oval to oblong or nearly linear
- All with a few coarse rounded teeth
- Stipules (appendages at junction of leafstalk and stem):
- Large, resembling leaf blades
- Deeply dissected with long thin, terminal lobe and several, narrow, shorter segments on either side
- Large, resembling leaf blades
Flowers
- Flowers on long thin stalks form axils of leaves
- Pale yellow or white and yellow,
- Resembling those of the cultivated pansy but much smaller
- About 1- 1.5 cm (2/5- 3/5 in.) long
- Very short spur (2 mm, 1/12 in.) at the base of the lower petal
- Seedpods splitting into 3 divisions and scattering numerous, small, brownish seeds
- Flowers from early May to midsummer and occasionally in autumn
Often Confused With
Field Pansy (Field pansy’s petals are 3 times longer than the sepals, field violet’s petals are the same length or shorter than its sepals.)