A Word About Yellow Violets

Yellow Violets

A word about the confusing world of yellow violets. I love the unexpected look of a yellow violet! However, it seems that putting an accurate name on some of these plants can be very confusing. Once upon a time there were several recognized species of stemmed yellow violets with roundish heart-shaped leaves (V. pubescens, V. eriocarpon, V. pensylvanica, etc.) but upon some study it was decided that they were all simply variants of the same plant so they all got lumped together under V. pubescens. We tried to look at our stemmed yellow violets that way here at Toadshade, & quite frankly, we have 3 different populations that differ quite a bit. So a couple of years ago we took a look at them again & found that authorities now recognize 3 subspecies of V. pubescens. This year we have all 3 forms available: what we believe to be V. pubescens var. peckii (seed originally from Onieda Co., NY) , V. pubescens var. scabriuscula (seed originally from Bucks Co., PA), & V. pubescens pubescens (seed originally from Bucks Co., PA)