Hedge banks and woods are full of violets: dog violets, early dog violets, hairy violets. From nowhere, they have materialised everywhere; as if from memory, they return through a whiff of sweet violet that conjures something mysterious from long ago, something ephemeral to be forgotten again when the noise of life shouts them down.
Violet flowers come from a subterranean culture. In these limestone woods they are the essential food plants of fritillary butterflies, although many of them may only exist in memory now. The name comes from the Old French violette and the Latin viola. Violaceous describes a colour, the innermost arc of the rainbow, but many of these flowers are mauve, purple, lilac, blue, claret, smoky or white. Violet describes a fragrance: a sweet, powdery, earthy, woody, floral odour created by ionomes in the flower. This ion was recorded as a cure for eye and throat infections by Dioscorides (circa AD50), and violets were mentioned by Hippocrates (circa 460-377BC).
Violet is a state of mind, somewhere between V for vernalisation – the cold, dark days of winter dormancy in the underworld to initiate the flower buds – and V for vernal – the kapow! of vert, viridis, of green bursting from the earth where violets cluster now like notes of birdsong at the rebirth of primavera. V is for Venus, goddess of love: the herbalist Nicholas Culpeper in his Complete Herbal (1653) said violets were “fine pleasing plants of Venus, of a mild nature, no way harmful”. V is for vestal: “Welcome, maids of honour,” wrote Robert Herrick in his poem To Violets (1648), “You do bring / In the spring.” But it was reckoned bad luck to pick the first violets and bring them into the house; they could also bring fleas, rain, the death of a loved one. Violets are a flower of Mary, evoked for protection against evil in the double VV (virgin of virgins) witch marks found in caves and old buildings.
The stories we tell can violate, smothering the fleetingness of things that exist despite us. Soon our noticing will drive violets back underground, to wait, to appear again as if we had forgotten them. One day we will.
