Pansies In All Their Brilliant Faces

Walk into any garden center at this time of the year and you can’t help but be struck by the sights and scents of the pansies and their brilliant laughing faces. They are members of the viola family that comprises well over 500 different species, and while there are those violas that are eaten and a few that have medicinal properties, for the most part gardeners see them as either disposable annuals, woodland wildflowers or, if they grow in your lawn or formal bed … weeds.One thing that is inescapable, though, is that over the years flower breeders have done some wonderful things to the group that we call pansies, which probably have their roots and lineage in viola tricolor. As a young boy I can remember going to Garden World in Queens with my father and seeing row after row of pansies that had just been dug from the fields and slid into small flats made of a thin wood veneer. There were no choices in colors or flower size other than there being the large-flowered types simply known as pansies and the small-flowered types called Johnny-jump-ups. They were notorious for being reliably tender and getting foliar diseases.

Pansies are not any hardier than they used to be, but the choices of colors and the sizes of flowers is remarkable. Growing methods have also changed dramatically. For the most part the plants are grown in greenhouses instead of outdoors, and this can cut down a great deal on disease problems. Another change in the growing regime is that some growers start their seeds many months ahead of our traditional spring planting time. As a result, you can also find some pansies at garden centers in the early fall, and these can color your garden until we get a hard frost in November. During the winter, if they are very slightly mulched with hay to protect from wind and sunburn, they can be uncovered in late March, and trimmed, and they will happily rebloom. Remember though that these plants are biennials at best and if planted in the fall they should be dug up the following summer and composted. For fall plantings look for the following varieties: Crystal Bowl, Maxim, Presto, Rally, Sky, Skyline and Universal.

For those of you who choose to plant pansies now, remember that these plants prefer the cool days of spring, and once the hot and dry days of June begin to set in, the pansies begin to suffer and in most circumstances they don’t do well through the summer. Pansies are available in straight colors, bi-colors and tri-colors, and some of the most popular varieties, 12 in all, now available, will have “Sorbet” in their name. In fact, there is one variety of the Sorbet group called “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.” This group has a unique feature called a jumping gene that causes the flowers to actually change color as the flower matures.

While the disease problems once endemic to pansies have not been completely overcome, there is a simple practice that will minimize your problems. It seems that one of the most problematic diseases is pythium, and to a great degree you can avoid it by not planting violas in the same spot every year. Powdery mildew can also be a problem later in the season but it’s not worth trying to control since the plants should be yanked at about the time the mildew sets in.

There are yet other members of the viola family that are short-lived perennials and in fact they may self-seed, hybridize and colonize in the landscape. In this area we have both the V. cornuta and V. odorata. The cornutas tend to have slightly smaller flowers but they can be found in straight colors such as blue, white, apricot and a very dark blue that is sold as a black. These plants should always be considered to be short-lived perennials and if you are planting in mixed colors expect them to cross-breed. The result will be unplanned color combinations. Also remember that while the cornutas are much more heat-tolerant than the pansies, they too will suffer in the dog days of summer. If they are trimmed back in early August they will rebloom in late September.

The V. odoratas are again slightly hardier than the cornutas. These plants may naturalize when they are in just the right spots that include a rich soil and no direct sunlight, but bright light as opposed to shade. Once established they need virtually no care and can be divided and replanted almost every year. In this group look for named varieties such as Rosina, Royal Robe, Snow Princess, Whiskers, White Czar, Robin Dale and Talitha.

In some undisturbed woods you may find a yellow violet growing in small clusters. This is Viola pubescens. It’s a native violet and it can be moved to similar wooded areas in the spring, but it will not do well in the garden as it prefers to be ignored and in the woodland setting.

As for the violets that grow in your lawn, along highways and in myriad other places, which causes them to be called weeds by some … there is a reason for their success. This is because these plants have varied methods that have allowed them to survive and propagate … and thwart gardeners’ and homeowners’ most concentrated attacks, be it by shovel, hoe or herbicide. It seems that no sooner do you get rid of one clump in one place than they return in force and pop up in another.

If you look closely at a clump of wild violets you’ll think there is no central stem to tie things together. Rather, it appears as if there is only a cluster of leaves coming out of the ground and these leaves surround a bunch of stalked flowers. The reason why you can’t easily get rid of these violets with a single excision is because of what you can’t see. Hidden underground, directly beneath the clump of violets, is a very short horizontal structure: a rhizome, the regeneration vehicle. This small rhizome is the parent of the violets in your lawn and at one point was the parent of all violas that grow in the wild. No matter how carefully you pull out the violets, there always seems to be enough of this reproductive reservoir to produce many more plants.

But that’s not the end of this plant’s tricks, and the plot thickens … or maybe sickens. If you take a closer look at a clump in the summer you’ll notice what appears to be little green flower buds snuggled near the base of the plant. You may have actually seen these and not given them a second thought. These little buds are called “cryptic flowers” and they have nothing to do with flowers later in the season or next year. Cryptic flowers are another of nature’s ways to ensure that the plant will reproduce and daunt you next year. They are mature flowers that will never open. They are self-fertile and require no cross-pollination, but they will produce healthy seed that guarantee a new generation identical to the parent. Sorry.

The seedlings of these violets opens yet another fascinating world. Scientists have found that two mechanisms are used to put violet seeds in contact with the soil and to broadcast them over a wide area. Each violet plant is equipped with one of the two seed-dispersing methods. The first method, which we’ll call the catapult method, uses air under pressure to fire the seeds a distance from the plant. The seeds mature and then dry in a dry fruit called a capsule. As the capsule itself ripens, its walls dry out, allowing the unit to open into sections called valves. At the proper time the valves begin to fold into themselves and the edges force the seeds out and shoot them many feet from the parent. Impatiens throw seeds in the same way—impatiently—and if you touch a capsule when it’s ripe you’ll know where another name, “touch-me-not,” came from.

The second method is just as ingenious and just as interesting. On the end of the seed of some violet varieties is a tiny oil gland called a caruncle. Ants love the oil in the caruncles. When the ants find the oil-tipped seeds, they carry them off to their nests, chew off the caruncle, enjoy the oil, then dump the remainder of the violet seed in the colony’s garbage dump. Here, as in your own compost heap, the seed finds what it needs to grow, starts to sprout and a new colony is formed.

All in all if you’ve got wild violets and if you’re not willing to use chemical herbicides with some tenacity … this may well be a plant to be tolerated instead of setting out on near-futile efforts aimed at eradication.