Sweet violet along a bridleway

Under the blackthorn scrub along a local bridleway are the white-purple flowers of sweet violet Viola odorata. Unlike the lesser celandine also found flowering in early Spring, the violet flowers have an irregular or zygomorphic shape ie they are bilaterally symmetrical and have sepals with back pointing appendages and a spur on the lower lip petal. It is our only fragrant violet with downy leaves and associated with calcareous soils.

Sweet violet

Sweet violets under blackthorn scrub

Violets have a considerable association with art, religion, politics, different cultures, food and social movements. It is one of the oldest colours used by Man. Traces of very dark violet are present on prehistoric cave art dating to about 25,000 years in in France and possibly to 50,000 years in Australia. The colour was made made by grinding the mineral manganese and mixing with with water or animal fat and then brushed on the cave wall or applied with the fingers. It may also have been used to colour the body and to decorate animal skins.

A cave in the Cuevas de las Manos locality with hand paintings Patagonia

At the UNESCO Cuevas de las Manos prehistoric caves in Patagonia, I saw the negative painted or stencilled hands, mainly of the left, and depictions of humans, various animals such as guanaco and hunting scenes with bolas dating to 9000-13000 years ago. The binder is unknown but the mineral pigments include iron oxides producing reds and purples, kaolin for white and manganese oxide making black.

Guanaco

Cuevas de las Manos Rio de la Pinturas Patagonia. Left stencilled hands – mainly ochre colour but other colours include purple

Violet was the symbol of ancient Athens and the colour has a long association with royalty, Roman Emperors and Bishops because Tyrian Purple dye was very expensive. The colour became brighter with weathering and sunlight. It was made from a sea snail called the murex found around the Mediterranean and extraction of the dye required tens of thousands of snails and much labour. This is a medieval depiction of the coronation of the Emperor Charlemagne 800CE with the Bishops and Cardinals wearing Tyrian Purple with the Pope in white. (Wikipedia – free to use and share commercially). In the 18thC synthetic dyes were developed in Scotland such as Cudbear made from orchil lichens and ammonia.

The Scented Wild Flowers book has 7 pages on history, literature and uses for Sweet violet.  For centuries it has been cultivated for its sweetening, fragrant and culinary properties. Violets were grown in many Medieval gardens in England to cook with meat and game. Thomas Tusser in his Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry in 1573 gave practical advice on the use of many scented flowers and leaves, with sweet violet as one of several species suitable for strewing on floors to relieve damp musty smells. The apothecary, John Gerard in his Herbal of 1597, mentioned the widely used practice of syrup of sweet violet as a safe purgative for small children.

Gerard rubbed shoulders with Shakespeare where this plant alone is used on 18 occasions to reflect its quickly fading fragrance, early flowering and association with death and funerals. It is now known this is not because the plant loses its fragrance when cut, but a chemical called ionine dulls our sense of smell. Grassy violet strewn banks are a common feature, perhaps the most well known being from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, where oxslips and the nodding violet grows.

Napoleon before his exile to Elba in 1814, picked blooms from the grave of his wife Josephine which were found in a locket on his death bed.  Bunches of violets were the height of fashion in 19thC England as seen in the poetry and letters of John Keats. Violets and / or oils are still used today in baking such as for violet creams, cosmetics and aromatherapy. (Copyright credit & licence link – free to use – https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/9508299069)