Outdoor Hour Challenge
Violets Nature Study
I love violets! In the summer, we have thousands of them that come up all over the yard. They are in the flower beds, in the lawn, and even between the pavers of our walkway! I love their happy colors and I’m anxious to see them again once the season changes.
Most of our violets are transplants from a friend that have gone wild and reseeded themselves. But, we do have one native violet that grows as a wildflower along the edges of our property. It is the goosefoot violet and it’s yellow.
I need to be careful when I’m weeding along the fence because I could easily weed them right out of the flower bed. Learning their leaf shape, a distinctive “goose print” shape, has helped me to let them be when I’m cleaning out the weeds. Plus, it helps me remember its name! The goosefoot violet is one of our spring ephemerals and signals us that spring is on its way, making it a very welcome flower when we see it starting to bloom.
I think Anna Botsford Comstock had a love for violets as well. When you read the lesson in the Handbook of Nature Study you can hear her appreciation for their form and beauty. She does mention the fact that not all violets are fragrant. This was a surprise to me because our violets in California all had that distinctive violet perfume fragrance. The goosefoot violet has no fragrance at all. Turns out, Anna was helpful in giving us some valuable information in order to correctly identify the wild violets.
View the original challenge here: Outdoor Hour Challenge – Violets.
Make sure to check your local field guide to see which violets are native and then be on the lookout for some to observe in your nature study. As suggested in the original challenge, look for “johnny jump ups” in your garden nursery as a substitute for wild violets.
If you have access to the Winter Nature Study Continues ebook, there are two notebook pages to choose from for your nature journal.
To purchase an Ultimate Naturalist Library membership, click on over to the Join Us page at any time. You can use the discount code NATURE5 to receive $5 off your Ultimate Naturalist Library membership.
Members can download and use any of the wildflower challenges from the three ebooks available in the Member’s Library.
