Viola Arvensis is a species of the violet family that can be found in many open fields and gardens. The flowering Viola Arvensis is known for its pretty flowers with white, purple, and yellow markings on the petals.
The charming Viola Arvensis is perfect for container gardens, where its lovely grace can be admired and its rapid growth controlled.
Contents
What Is a Viola Arvensis?
The Viola Arvensis is a low-growing perennial plant that can be found in Europe, Africa, and Asia. This plant is self-sowing, scattering its seeds into the soil and proliferating so quickly that some gardeners use herbicide to control the spread.
Viola Arvensis Care
Caring for the Viola Arvensis can be quite low-maintenance due to its hardiness and resilience. The plant has been shown to exhibit a typical life cycle of 75 to 100 calendar days, although the length can vary according to the growing season.
– Water
Established Viola Arvensis plants grow exceptionally well, even if they are left unattended for some time. They enjoy moderate watering, where the soil is evenly moist but not overly wet.
During the hotter, warmer seasons of the year, these plants can be watered regularly once or twice a week.
The soil should ideally dry out slightly in between watering schedules.
While the Field Pansy can tolerate some level of drought, they flower best with regular schedules for watering.
– Light
The Viola Arvensis prefers full sun exposure, although the heat of the sun can cause the plant to wither. In colder spring seasons where the daytime sun exposure is high, this pretty pansy grows fantastically well. In warmer seasons, these plants prefer a little bit of shade during the hotter parts of the afternoon.
– Soil
Growing Viola Arvensis can be found in differing soil compositions, making them resilient and adaptable to diverse soil conditions. The most ideal soil mixture for the pretty pansy is a potting mix with peat or garden soils with a large amount of organic material.
Field Pansies grow best in rich, moist soils with plenty of humus with a slightly acidic pH level. Peat moss mixed into garden soils can greatly benefit this pansy’s growth development. The soil is also ideally well-draining to prevent the plant from sitting in overly wet soil.
– Temperature
The Viola Arvensis can tolerate a vast range of temperatures, although they perform best during the cooler seasons. It is often grown as an annual plant in North America, so there are no classified USDA zones for this pansy.
The Field Pansy prefers an average temperature of 40 to 70 F to grow prolifically and bloom. However, warmer seasons can also hasten the reproductive stage of the plant, with higher incidences of flowering and fruiting.
Viola Arvensis flowers best in cool seasons, so gardeners prefer to cultivate them during the start and end of colder seasons. Gardeners also love these plants for bridging the warm and cool seasons with their cheerful flowers.
In colder climates, they are normally planted during spring. In regions without the threat of winter and frost, they are usually planted in the fall.
Hot temperatures can cause the Field Pansy flowers to fade, and the plants tend to die back under excessive heat.
– Humidity
The Viola Arvensis is a resilient and adaptable plant, commonly found in the wilderness and growing in cultivated conditions. The adaptive nature of this plant gives it a flexible growth system and requires no specific humidity levels to thrive and reproduce.
– Fertilizer
The Viola Arvensis acquires its nutrients from the rich humus soil it tends to grow on, whether in the wild or cultivation. Gardeners who grow this pansy prefer to supplement the rich soil with slow-release fertilizers to encourage the plant to flourish and flower.
Some gardeners add a half-strength dosage of fish emulsion twice a month for Field Pansies in containers for an added boost.
– Repotting
The small compact size of the Viola Arvensis plant makes it an ideal candidate for container gardening. Gardeners tend to repot Viola Arvensis in beddings, window boxes, and containers to brighten up their areas.
– Rest Period
The Viola Arvensis may possibly survive light frost during the winter and grow back when the spring season approaches. In regions where there are possibilities of deep winter freezes, the extreme cold temperature could cause the Field Pansy to die.
Propagation
The resilient Viola Arvensis reproduces by self-sowing seeds, making this plant extremely easy to grow and easily spread out. The reproductive nature of this pansy makes it an invasive plant, where it could quickly overtake certain areas with amazing speed.
The Field Pansy has been recorded to have seed capsules that contain up to 75 seeds and can spread them as far as eight feet away. A mature pansy can produce up to 2,500 seeds in its lifetime, and the seeds have been noted to wait up to several decades prior to germination.
A peptide of the plant has shown promise in cytotoxic activity against human cancer cells.
Features of the Viola Arvensis
– Origins
The Viola Arvensis takes its name from the description in 1753 given by Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, zoologist, physician, and taxonomist. Arvensis is a botanical Latin word that means “living in open fields,” which pertains to uncultivated plants growing abundantly in meadows and clearings.
One scientific name that is less popular for the Viola Arvensis is Viola tricolor subspecies Arvensis, which can account for the three colors of the plant’s flowers.
Other Names
Viola Arvensis is also commonly known as the Field Pansy due to its profuse growth in fields. Pansy takes its name from the French word “pensee,” which means thought.
Another common name for the Viola Arvensis is Johnny Jump-Up, supposedly since the flower looks like it suddenly jumped out from the field.
– Size
The Viola Arvensis is an annual herbaceous plant that usually grows to eight inches tall, and sometimes up to 15 inches. The plant is easily distinguishable from other pansies, as it is relatively smaller and produces more flowers than other varieties of pansies.
– Leaves
The Viola Arvensis develops leaves from a rosette formed at the base of the plant. The young leaves start out round to oval with small, toothed leaf margins. Mature leaves become longer and narrower, with round serrated margins. The underside of the mature leaves also produces short, hairy veins.
The Field Pansy leaf is simple and arranged alternately as there is a single leaf for each node along the short stem. The leaves of the Field Pansy contain high amounts of vitamins A and C.
– Roots
The roots of the Viola Arvensis are fibrous and fine. When crushed, the roots emit a wintergreen scent that can be quite refreshing.
– Flowers
Viola Arvensis produces flowers that may be edible, and its flowers are rich in vitamins A and C. The flowers are showy, with a dominant white color tinted with majestic purple and sunny yellow. The blooms are pretty fragrant as well, showing up multiple times in a year where the conditions are favorable to frequent flowering.
The color of the bloom of the Field Pansy is mainly white or creamy white, with splashes of lavender and lemon yellow on some of the petals. The center of the bloom has a yellow mark with indicators of nectar that span out. This petal points to pollinating insects where to harvest the nectar, triggering the pollination process.
Flowering Season
The Field Pansy can even bloom sometime in the fall, making this plant a welcome display during the more austere seasons. Gardeners enjoy the prolonged spectacular summery masses of the tri-colored blooms during the fall season. The bloom is also singular per flowering stalk and can grow up to over half an inch wide.
The Field Pany’s flowering period can last from May until October. Cutting back these plants during the later parts of summer can prepare them for autumn flowering.
– Habitat
The Viola Arvensis can be normally found in Europe, North Africa, as well as Western Asia. These plants can be commonly found growing in dry open clearings along roads, coastal areas, meadows, and old farming fields.
Their introduction to other countries and regions has made them quite invasive, and some parts of the world have listed the Field Pansy as an invasive weed.
In areas where they naturally occur, the Viola Arvensis thrives exceptionally well as perennial or annual plants. Due to their adaptability and resilience, these plants are quite suited to be grown in regions similar to their original habitats.
Gardeners who cultivate the small, humble plant for its colorful and fragrant flowers often plant them as borders or container plants.
FAQ
What pests does Viola Arvensis Pansy attract?
Viola Arvensis Pansies can attract pests such as aphids, snails, and slugs.
Is Viola Arvensis Pansy slow growing?
No, Viola Arvensis Pansy is not slow growing. It is known for its fast growth rate.
What is the best potting soil mix for Viola Arvensis Pansy?
The ideal potting soil mix for Viola Arvensis Pansies includes well-draining soil, organic matter, and perlite for added aeration.
Conclusion
The Viola Arvensis is exceptionally easy to care for. In some cases, the plant can become invasive due to its rapid reproduction rate. Let’s review what we need to know about caring for this plant properly:
- The Viola Arvensis plants are incredibly low maintenance even under less-than-ideal conditions, and they can reproduce rapidly.
- Field Pansies are best cultivated in containers to prevent them from becoming invasive.
- The Viola Arvensis has possible medical properties that need to be studied.
The humble charm of the Viola Arvensis shows that despite its weed-like growth behavior, the plant can display a surprising beauty and possible health benefits. The Field Pansy proves that even the humblest plant can be of great use!
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