British Plants and Flowers – Heartsease

Name – The viola tricolour is also known as the Wild Pansy, Garden violet, Bonewort, Heartsease and Love Idol!

Description – This native plant has heart-shaped leaves about a inch and a half across and flowers that emerge in shades of purple, lavender-blue, white or yellow with the upper petals dark purple, and lower streaked purple, in both spring and summer.

Origin – Found on grassland, uncultivated areas and gardens. Heartsease is best sown in the autumn, but can be sown all year round, it’s a pretty tolerant plant that likes Part sun or part shade because sunlight is important to the flower development. As the plants establish, if you want to keep them as perennials rather than having new plants each year, make sure you prune them back and thin them out occasionally. This has several purposes; it prevents them from completely taking over an area to the exclusion of other plants, and also improves air circulation around the base and between the stems of the plans, which limits the likelihood of diseases like botrytis and powdery mildew. The plant will also flower abundantly and produce ample seed, so as blooms fade it is advisable to deadhead your plant to stop it seeding all over the garden and to conserve the considerable energy it takes the plant to produce seed which it will then put back into growing more flowers! From the earliest recorded times, the young flower buds and leaves of Heartsease have been used either raw or cooked, they can be added to soup, a tea can be made from the leaves and the flowers can be used as a garnish or added to salads.

British plant heartsease photograph by Kriko L, used under a creative commons attribution licence

 

bluebell, comfrey, flax, foxglove, hawthorn, heartsease, heather, herb robert, holly, hollyhock, honeysuckle, hop, hornbeam, jacobs ladder, larkspur, oak, periwinkle, rowan, silver birch, snowdrop, tansy, vipers bugloss, wild strawberry, willow, yarrow

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