Viola tricolor Seeds | Wild Pansy
LATIN NAME: Viola tricolor
COMMON NAME: Wild Pansy, Heartsease, Johnny Jump Up
Plant Profile
Wild pansy is a short-lived annual or biennial of ten to thirty centimetres with lobed leaves and a flower that carries three colours in one face: violet upper petals, pale lower petals and a yellow eye. The flower is unscented or faintly sweet, and it turns its face to the sun.
It grows in cultivated fields, on walls and in waste ground across Europe, and it has followed wheat and rye for thousands of years. In a garden it self-sows into paving and into the edges of beds, which is why it is called Johnny-jump-up in North America. The leaves are edible when young and are used in spring salads in some districts, though the quantity is small.
Science & Biotechnology
The species is the wild ancestor of the garden pansy, which was bred in Britain in the 1830s by crossing it with Viola lutea and with a large-flowered violet. The garden pansy is a complex hybrid, and the wild plant is still used in breeding for hardiness and for the yellow eye.
The seed pod splits into three valves and ejects the seed several metres when it dries, which is how the plant moves around a garden without being planted. The flowers are self-fertile and also visited by bees, and a plant in a mild winter will flower in almost every month of the year. The plant is also one of the hosts of the violet leaf spot fungus, which does little harm in a border but spreads to violets grown for show.
Uses & Benefits
The flowers are edible and are used to decorate salads, desserts and cold drinks, and they are candied in the same way as violets. They have almost no flavour, so their value is entirely visual.
The plant has a long record in herbal medicine as a remedy for skin complaints and for palpitations, and it contains salicylates and saponins which give it a mild action. It is also used as a potherb in some districts, cooked in spring. Modern use is ornamental and culinary rather than medicinal. The plant is also grown between paving stones and in the cracks of a stone wall, where its self-sowing habit does the planting.
Growing from Seed
Sow in late summer or early autumn on the surface, since light helps germination, and thin to fifteen centimetres. An autumn sowing gives plants that flower through a mild winter and finish in early summer, which is better than a spring sowing in a hot climate.
Grow in sun or part shade on any soil that is not too rich; rich soil produces leaves and few flowers. Deadhead to prolong flowering, or leave a few pods to ripen if you want it to seed around. In a hot summer the plants die back, and a second sowing in late summer brings them back. In a container the plant needs a cool position and steady water, since a pot in full sun dries out and stops flowering.
Our Take
A cheerful, self-sowing, edible flower that asks for nothing, and the wild ancestor of the garden pansy. Let it seed into the paving.
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