bach (the V. canina of our tab, 620, and of Curt. FI. Land. v. 1.
tab. 182), we have thought it desirable to give a figure of it.
It is certainly the original V. sylvatica of Fries, and we are
strongly impressed with the opinion that his name ought to
be retained for it. The nomenclature of the French botanist
is here adopted, because it is devoid of all ambiguity.
Lamarck’s term, V. sylvestris, does not belong to this p lan t:
it is an absolute synonym of the true V. canina of Linnaeus.
He called it Violette sauvage, and properly translated that
term into the Latin V. sylvestris (FI. Fr. ed. 1. v. 2. 680). V.
sylvatica means Wood Violet as distinct from V. canina, which
inhabits heaths and fens. Sylvestris means wild as contradistinguished
from cultivated.
V. Reichenbachiana may be known from V. Riviniana (tab.
620) by its more slender habit, cordate-prolonged rather than
cordate-acute leaves, narrower lilac flowers with much more
slender petals and a spur which is usually, if not always, of a
rather darker colour than the rest of the corolla, and the small
appendages at the base of the corolla, which become less
distinct as the fruit ripens. The venation of the lower petal
affords a valuable character. Here it consists of a few parallel
veins,, usually nearly simple. In V. Riviniana these veins
branch and anastomose.
This plant and its ally cannot be confounded with the true
V. caniiia, if attention is paid to the central rosette of leaves
in these, and its want in that plant. Here the growth is indeterminate,
in that determinate; for here the terminal bud
lives through the winter, and prolongs the short stem, there
the stem dies back, and the new growth is from below the end
of that of the preceding year.
This plant inhabits banks and thickets, and seems to be
more common in the east of England than elsewhere. It
flowers' in the latter half of April and the first part of May.
The specimens figured were gathered at Cambridge, on April
2.H, 1864, by the describer.—C. C. B.