Botanical name: Viola riviniana
Folk names: Dog violet, cuckoo’s shoe

Type: Perennial

Wildlife: Nectar for spring-active bees and shelter for insects. Caterpillar food plant of fritillary butterflies (these rare butterflies are not found in gardens).

Flowers: April to May

Decorative merit: White or violet flowers on short stems with ovate, heart-shaped leaves, popping up like little jewels.

Where: Sun and shade-tolerant spring ground cover spreading by rhizomes with delicate flowers that look lovely in a flowering lawn or beneath a mixed native hedge or shrubs where it can naturalise. Try in a border where you don’t mind it gently spreading and popping up in spring.

Folklore: Mythologised in Ancient Greece, where violets were used for garlands and crowns, and used over centuries in wine and as edible decoration. William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows…”

Violet family relative of pansy

Donate seeds to Exeter Seed Bank