I suspect this is a dog violet; this type takes over our yard this time of the year (since we don’t do heavy chemical treatments, and, geeze, yeah, who manages to make time to do much weeding!).
I know some people are obsessed and/or fascinated by violets, but I only look at them once or twice a year, then move on.
So, I check my ol’ buddy Wikipedia for general reference info on violets, and find out they are more properly referred to as a group as violas (which I thought a musical instrument), and that pansies are a kind of viola-flower. Well, duh, they look like big violets, so I guess that makes a bit of sense, but I’ve also learned that simple large-scale morphological similarities aren’t always enough to indicate close relationships in modern taxonomics….
23 March 2008 at 5:28 pm
Pooh says:
And why would you want to weed out violets? Heck, I only weed the dandelions in the front yard when the neighbors are outside too. Long live lawns that are multi-cultural! Every spring we have spring beauties in our back yard, and the rule is that the lawn can’t be mowed until they finish blooming. (“Claytonia virginica”, for you purists.) Easy for me to remember, since we live a block and a half from Clayton.
24 March 2008 at 9:10 am
Sammy says:
These violets spread and take over the lawn, which is supposed to be green with grass not violet leaves. It is silly, however, but such are social mores.