More Than Just A Pretty Face

 

Day 233: The key to identifying Violets often lies not in their pretty faces, but in the presence or absence of a sac-like structure called a "spur" at the back of the blossom. If a spur is present, observers should take care to note whether it is upturned, long or short, thin or pouchlike. Further identifying features include bearded or unbearded petals, number of petals with veination, and of course leaf shape. Many species of Violets occur in Mount Rainier National Park, and identifying them correctly can be very difficult, especially as young plants.

Your correspondent refers to Violets as "the Warblers of the Plant Kingdom," and if you've ever browsed that section in Roger Tory Peterson's "Field Guide to Eastern Birds," you'll understand exactly what I mean. Peterson devotes two pages of illustrations to more than two dozen species of (and I quote) "confusing fall warblers." You've gotta love Roger Tory. He gets right to the point. Violets, whether blue or yellow, are much the same here in the Pacific Northwest. I took a lunchtime field trip with a colleague today, specifically to seek these out on the Trail of the Shadows at Longmire. Even with Mark Turner's extensive "Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest" in hand, I found myself only offering a chuckle and a 96% certainty for my identification of this plant as Viola langsdorfii, the Aleutian or Alaska Violet.