Header image: Suited up to simulate the conditions of working outside on Mars. Jonathan Clarke (the author, left) with visiting engineer Michael Curtis-Rouse, from UK Space Agency (right). Jonathan Clarke personal collection, Author provided.
What's the Difference Between Violas and Pansies
07.08.2023 - 11:43 / blog.fantasticgardeners.co.uk
Even green thumbs think it’s an uphill battle to say which one is a pansy and which one is a viola. That’s what happens when people emphasize classifications rather than plants. Everything gets all complicated and confusing.
The mystery of the Violaceae family goes deep into even more enigmatic waters when you take into account the African violets – these stunning little beauties hail from the green fields of Africa (no Hemingway pun here, honest) and are totally unrelated to the viola genus.
Being a lovely quiz question aside, we won’t throw you in the deep end and leave you wondering. So welcome to the murky world of violas and pansies.
Violas and pansies both belong to the same genus viola which encompasses slightly less than 600 varieties. Cultivating and hybridizing were very much in vogue in Europe as soon as the Dark Ages were over. But by the late 18th century, the craze was more or less out of proportion, and hybridizing, in particular, was in full swing.
That’s when the so-called “pansies” (its origin is the word penséem, in Middle French, it stands for thought) entered the lighted stage and became the stuff of legends. Or did they become an important part of the popular consciousness even earlier? What’s for sure is that pansies/violas were immortalized by Shakespeare as the “love-in-idleness” plant.
And the lines “little western flower, / Before milk white, now purple with love’s wound, / And maidens call it love-in-idleness” still ring true today. Mind it, that’s from Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was written at the very dawn of the 16th century.
Another notable person who provided the violas/pansies with some love was Darwin, describing them as “beautiful, flat, symmetrical, velvet-like
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