A velvety face of violet, yellow and cream petals, marked with dark lines, on a sprawling low plant with long, leaf-like stipules
Wild pansy or heartsease, Viola tricolor.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Wild pansy (heartsease)
Native · flowers Apr–Sep · grassland, dunes, arable margins and waste ground
Viola tricolor — Violaceae
The wild pansy, or heartsease, is a small annual or short-lived perennial with three-coloured flowers of violet, yellow and cream, and the folk names to match: love-in-idleness, come-and-cuddle-me, three faces in a hood. Shakespeare made it the magic love-juice of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it is one of the ancestors of the garden pansy. A yellow form, subspecies curtisii, grows on sand dunes.
How to spot them
- ▸Flat, velvety face about 1.5–2.5 cm across, the upper petals violet and the lower ones cream or yellow, with dark veins
- ▸Deeply lobed, leafy stipules at the base of the leaf stalks, the terminal lobe larger and leaf-like
- ▸Sprawling stems up to about 30 cm; grassland, arable fields, dunes and waste ground
- ▸Petals longer than the sepals, unlike the field pansy
- ▸Look-alike: field pansy, Viola arvensis — creamy-yellow flowers 15 mm across or smaller, with sepals as long as or longer than the petals. The larger, purple-and-yellow face marks this species
How to know it
In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon uses the juice of 'love-in-idleness' on Titania's sleeping eyelids to make her fall in love with Bottom
Love-in-idleness is a folk name of the wild pansy; the flower is also called heartsease.
Folk names include come-and-cuddle-me, three faces in a hood and Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me
Wild pansy.
The bedding plant of gardens is a hybrid with this species among its parents, and the gardener William Thomson produced a blotched hybrid in 1839
Wild pansy — one ancestor of the garden pansy, Viola × wittrockiana.
A much smaller cousin, with creamy-yellow flowers 15 mm across and sepals as long as or longer than its petals, often confused with this plant
The cousin is field pansy; the larger, purple-and-yellow plant is wild pansy.
Ophelia hands out this flower in Hamlet 'for thoughts' — the name comes from the French pensée
Pansy = pensée, thought; heartsease.
Quick-fire facts
- •Native annual, biennial or short-lived perennial; flowers April to September, in grassland, on dunes, arable margins and waste ground
- •Family Violaceae; wild pansy flowers are usually less than 2 cm across and a mix of violet and yellow (Kew)
- •Mentioned in The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream as love-in-idleness (Shakespeare Birthplace Trust)
- •Common names include heart's-ease, love-in-idleness, come-and-cuddle-me and Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me
- •One of the ancestors of the garden pansy (Viola × wittrockiana); the 'blotched' garden pansy dates from about 1839
- •Subspecies curtisii, a mainly yellow-flowered form, grows on sand dunes and in coastal sand
- •The French pensée means thought; hence pansy
- •Edible flowers with vitamins A and C are known for the field pansy (Plantlife); wild pansy has a long herbal history for skin and chest complaints
Drill it — 7 cards
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Sources
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Wild pansy
- Shakespeare Birthplace Trust — Shakespeare's favourite flowers: the pansy
- Plantlife — Field pansy