Pansy

Family: Violaceae (Violet family)
Botanical name: Viola x wittrockiana

Picture courtesy of Oregon State University Landscape Plant Database

My relationship with pansies has had its ups and downs. As a new gardener many years ago, I tended to jumble everything together, sorted only by size. The more color, the better. Mixed-up, in those days, was good. The bright hues and exuberance of dependable pansies suited my taste, and I simply could not get enough of them. I tried to persuade mine to perform past their prime, reluctant to let any plant go.

Then I moved on to my snooty-plant days and eschewed anything “common.” There went the pansies, the petunias, the marigolds, the alyssum—although alyssum, once invited in, never really moves out, does it?

Today, my plant choices are no longer defined by such judgments. I pick what I grow according to what suits my own sense of style, informed by personal experience built over the years. And once again I make places for pansies. Particularly small places—containers of some sort—and particularly at this time of year.

The pansies I buy at the garden center, or grow from seed, never existed in the wild. They’re all hybrids, specifically developed for home gardeners around the world, and they come in an amazing variety and three sizes: Large, with flowers 3 to 4 inches wide; medium, 2 to 3 inches, and multiflora, 1 to 2 inches. Each of these categories tends also to exhibit slightly different growth habits. Those with smaller flowers, for example, typically have more blooms, grow closer to the ground, and spread wider.

The many choices we have today in the pansy department result from what some say is the most ambitious and wide-ranging hybridizing scheme in all of horticulture. Others point out that pansies sport such new forms and colors so freely that developing new strains is as easy as letting them grow. What no one can quibble with is the long history of human admiration for the antecedents of our modern pansies. Viola tricolor—we know them as Johnny-jump-ups—and other Viola species have been appreciated by poets and playwrights, herbalists and cooks, and romantics for centuries. The name “pansy” originates from a word meaning “thought” and evolved to denote thoughts of love. One of the many common names given to Viola x wittrockiana is heartsease.

The transformation of wild pansies into the modern variety began in the early part of the 19th century, when a young lady in England cultivated some V. tricolor in a heart-shaped flowerbed. Nature took its course, the pansies intermingled, and observations of new colors were noted. Shortly thereafter, a nobleman and his gardener embarked on a thirty-year program to bring some predictable order to the proceedings. They bred several species of Viola from different regions to create stable varieties for home gardeners and florists. Others picked up where they left off, and today there are more than 300 named varieties of what we call “pansy.”

The plant itself is a perennial, although best grown by most of us as an annual to add sparkle to late-winter gardens. They’ll grow in full sun or light shade, and they’re lovers of good soil, regular watering, and heavy feeding. Keep them well supplied with a complete fertilizer that’s a wee bit heavy with nitrogen. Pick off spent blooms and some of the surrounding foliage to prolong the show and keep the plant from becoming too rangy. By all means, be on watch for slugs. They’ll march out from their hiding places pronto when pansies are planted. No other pests are much of a problem, mostly because we plant and grow pansies before our most common pests appear. The one disease you might see is powdery mildew, particularly late in the pansy season, which translates here into May and June.

All parts of the plant are edible. It’s not uncommon today to find pansy petals in salads or candied on cakes. Avoid eating too many yellow pansy petals, though. The same substance that gives them that color can cause mild digestive upset in some people. Tea brewed from pansy leaves is said to be a powerful love potion, if you’re looking for something along those lines this month. At the very least, you’ll be treating your beloved to a good dose of Vitamin C.

Enjoy Valentine’s Day, whether the C you have in mind is about vitamins—or chocolate.