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Early Weeds - Part 3

© Marge Talt

As gardeners, we spend more time handling weeds than we do the plants we grow on purpose. One of the reasons plants are considered "weeds" is that they are incredibly successful at the task of survival. They're tough, adaptable and have perfected various means of ensuring that their genes continue. Some of them form large food storage appendages in the form of rhizomes and tap roots or corms and tubers. Some of them set massive amounts of seed. Some do both of these things.

One More Lovely Thug

Viola papilionacea, the wild, wood or common blue violet is a lovely, early spring wildflower to some and a pernicious, hard to eradicate weed to others. It's both to me.

This one, whose leaves and petals were shredded by a hail storm, has the typical purple, blue flower, although they also appear in white and I have some that are bicolored blue and white. The flowers are five petaled - two up and three down, with the middle lower petal spurred.

A perennial member of the family Violaceae, along with pansies and Johnny-jump-ups, the wild violet has been selected as the state flower for Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. They thrive in moist soils throughout the eastern United States and Canada. They will grow in sun or shade as long as the soil stays moist and have become weeds of turf grass as well as garden beds (and my gravel driveway!).

These are edible plants. The basal leaves, collected in early spring are incredibly high in vitamins A and C. The leaves have been used in soups and sauces and the petals for making candy, jams, jellies and syrups. They're even said to cure headaches. The leaves are a favorite of my local deer herd, who nip them off, leaving the stalks standing tall and bare.

The hairless, heart-shaped leaves, with rounded teeth along the margins, on long stems or petioles, arising from a rhizome, with flowers on separate stems helps to distinguish this violet from the hundreds of other species and crosses that exist.

The plants can form large colonies from spreading rhizomes and seeding. Normally about three to eight inches (7.5-20 cm) tall, the leaf stalks elongate after bloom and then begin to get ratty and turn yellow. If you are trying to encourage the plants or simply want to keep them, cut them back to the ground when this happens and they will put out new foliage.

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