A mass of wild, common blue violets blooming in a neighbor’s yard last week made a stunning sight, so I stopped and asked if I could take a picture. “Sure, go ahead, but I’d rather be rid of these weeds,” he said.
Indeed, violets are the bane of homeowners who strive for neat, weed-free lawns. Even so, patches of blooming violets in early spring can be superbly beautiful, worthy of a picture.
Violets have great appeal for spring wildflower lovers. Four states -- Illinois, Rhode Island, Wisconsin and New Jersey -- hold the common blue violet in such high esteem that it is their official state flower.
I often pause to admire the wild violets I encounter along Georgia's wooded trails, stream sides, roadsides -- or on neighborhood lawns. In Georgia, we have a lot to admire when it comes to wild violets: More than 30 species of the genus Viola occur in the state, about half of the 60 or so violet species that occur in North America.
Most of Georgia’s species are starting to bloom now and will continue to do so through May and as late as July. Some, like the common blue violet, are abundant; some are uncommon.
Depending on the species, violets sport blue, purple, lavender, yellow or white flowers. They all divide neatly into two main groups: stemless, those with no leaves on the flower stalk; and stemmed, those that do have leaves. The common blue is stemless.
The blue-flowered wood violet, white-flowered primrose-leaved violet and blue-flowered three-lobed violet are found throughout most of the state in dry or moist woods.
The pure lavender birdfoot violet, which grows along roadsides and in thin woods, grows mostly in North Georgia but is found in several South Georgia counties. The lilac-purple long-spurred violet, so called because of a narrow curved spur on the corolla of the flower, grows in the rich woods of the mountains of extreme North Georgia. Found throughout the mountains are the white Canada violet, the yellow woodland violet, the sweet white violet, the halberd-leaf yellow violet and the pale violet.
The open blooms attract bees and other flying insect pollinators. Most violet species, however, hide a little secret in their foliage. Deep under the leaves at the base of the plants are little flowers that never open. They produce seeds by self-pollination, which means that the bees are helpful but not necessary in perpetuating those species. Instead, the violets rely on crawling ants to disperse their seeds.
In the sky: Spring officially begins at 7:21 p.m. on Sunday. On the first day of spring, also known as the vernal equinox, day and night are of nearly equal length and the sun is at the midpoint of the sky.
Over the coming week, the moon will “shrink" from full to last quarter, said David Dundee, astronomer with Tellus Science Museum. Mercury is very low in the west just after dark. Venus rises out of the east about two hours before sunrise. Jupiter is very low in the west just after dark. Saturn rises in the east around sunset and will appear near the moon on Sunday evening.
