The link says that viola canadensis is purpley on the back of the bloom, and this one is all white there. Also, the petals are narrow like they look in this photo (and the canadensis seems really round). Maybe it's simply a "gone wild" version of some cultivated violet....? Any other native violet people out there with any other possibilities? Thanks for looking! Tina

It is V. sororia (or a close ally, but V. sororia is most likely). The 'broken' flowers have been seen before on V. sororia. For instance, Jeana Prewitt (Tennessee) found some, she and I discussed them a couple of years ago, and ended up naming the form 'Jeapurrs' (rhymes with jeepers-creepers). It is good to see your plants looking so well; such healthy foliage. Sometimes, plants (not just violets) with pale-spalshed flowers get that way because of a viral infection, which can manifest itself in the leaves sometimes too. And that can make the whole plant weak; not in your case though. So the colouration of your violets is wither not caused by a virus, or it is due to a virus that is well-tolerated (at least so far). Your dog digging them up will probably have done the population little harm, since new plants will grow from pieces of the rhizomes. In case you are not familar with it, V. sororia has two nicely finely violet/white speckled cultivars called 'Freckles' and 'Speckles' (depending on which colour forms the dots). And there is a form with white flowers with a blue centre (V. sororia f. priceana, the Confederate violet) and a similar one with pinky-purple centre, 'Alice Witter'. There are also pure white forms and at least one pinky-purple one. They all tend to breed true from seed; it would be interesting to see/know if your colour form also comes true from seed.

Thanks for this nice synopsis! I have only ordered from Well-Sweep once and had the opposite experience with the plants I received, but I should give them another try in case that was just a fluke. At the moment it seems that there are no sources for most of the pink odorata cultivars (and of course, pink Parmas haven't been in known cultivation for many years now and might only exist in Europe if they aren't extinct, which they may well be). If you mean 'Sulfurea' when you refer to a yellow one, then I've seen seed for the cultivar 'Irish Elegance' from time to time and strongly suspect the "orange" odorata sold by Well-Sweep could be 'Sulfurea' or perhaps even 'Crepuscule' or another such hybrid of 'Sulfurea'. There are no yellows aside from those, however, and none of them comes particularly close to approximating the actual color yellow. Stefan

If I had to guess really fast, I'd guess Viola sororia; mostly because it's very widespread and fairly common. But it looks like it could be any of the stemless blue type. You might want to try identifying it through the dichotomous key at the AVS website. Here is a link that might be useful: American Violet Society Dichotomous Key