A delicate violet that is endemic to the Cape area has posed some intriguing questions about its age and origins. Seeds have been collected and are now sprouting in laboratories in the USA and Sweden, writes Geraldine Gardiner of the Hermanus Botanical Society.

It all started when Kim Blaxland, a Viola expert, visited Hermanus from Philadelphia last summer specially to see our single species of violaceae, Viola decumbens, found growing at low elevations in well-drained sandy or gravelly soils in the Cape from Bainskloof to Riversdale.

It is believed to be an old species, Kim says, and poses some interesting botanical questions. Where does Viola decumbens come from? Why is it geographically separated from other species of violets? How long ago did it become separated?
In violet taxonomy, Viola decumbens belongs to the order Xylinosium along with two species from the Mediterranean region and one from the sandy coastal area of southern Spain. They are all considered primitive in violet evolution. They all have many tall woody stems arising from a single taproot. Only a few violets have this characteristic, one group of three species in Europe and one single species in South America.

The former are thought to be relict species that survived during glacial periods because they were above the ice sheets on the tops of the mountains. The South American species has been proposed as the ancestor of the Andean rosulate violas and is possibly the earliest surviving Viola species.

Botanists have begun to try to map an evolutionary family tree for the Viola family – and that is where our violet will hopefully help the scientists. For several decades chromosome numbers have been counted for many of the species but neither V. decumbens nor any of the species in South America has been counted.

New techniques now allow detailed mapping of the arrangement of amino acid bases which make up the chromosomes. Comparisons between the maps of different species will make it possible to draw the family tree.

It may be that V. decumbens was separated during the break-up of Gondwanaland.

It may also be that our baby viola was referred to at high botanical levels when the world-wide revision of the Violaceae family was discussed by botanists from around the world in Vienna in July, in conjunction with the International Botanical Congress. We await a report from our botanist on the spot, Kim.

Kim Blaxland has travelled the world looking for violets: all over North America, 4500 metres high in China, Japan (as a guest of the Japanese violet society), northern Cyprus and south-western Turkey, where she described a new species V. dirimliensis, northern and central Greece (including a trip up Mount Olympus), followed by the French Alps and parts of Italy.

In a steep gorge in Yunnan, looking for the Chinese yellow violet, large rocks descended upon them forcing a hasty retreat from a small earthquake situation. At the other end of the world in South Carolina she found her specimen in a rubbish dump in an industrial site.

In Chile she photographed tarantulas on a mountain slope near Santiago and in Patagonia she shared a cliff face with a rattle snake, but found a long lost Viola species. New Zealand and South Africa led to Tasmania this year where leeches climbed up her tripod – and her legs.

Future trips? Juneau Alaska (beware bears), Newfoundland, Vladivostok, Japan and the Chilean Atacama desert (if there is an El Nino, Kim says). In the light of all her adventures, Australian-born Kim may sound “real tough”, but she looks a picture of quiet soft-spoken elegance. A violet in disguise.

Specimens of the flower will be on display at the Hermanus Wildflower Festival which takes place at the Fernkloof Nature Reserve in Hermanus from 22 to 25 September.