Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail: Don Croner’s Wanders on the Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail (GAP) | Flora

At least five yellow violets occur along the GAP. The three most common are the Early Yellow Voilet (Viola rotundifolia), the Spear-leaf Violet (Viola hastata), and the Downy-yellow Violet (Viola pubescens). First of all, why are there yellow violets? Shouldn't violets be violet or at least blue, like the Common Blue Violet found along the GAP? Actually the word violet names a lineage, not a color. All true violets belong to the genus Viola, a worldwide group of roughly 525 to 600 species. The famous Swedish biologist Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778) first named the purple-flowered species of Europe, but the genus Voila turned out to be far larger than its namesake: as botanists catalogued relatives across the Americas and Asia they kept finding plants with the same floral architecture — five petals and a spurred lower lip, in colors of white, cream, multicolor, and yellow. The genus name stuck; the color palette diversified. Yellow, in particular, is not an accident. It reads well in the dim light of a deciduous understory, where early-spring pollinators—small mining bees, bee flies, the occasional mason bee—are doing most of the work. The dark purple lines on the lower petal of yellow violets are nectar guides, painted to steer those visitors in. On the GAP, this is why Viola hastata, V. rotundifolia, and V. pubescens, are fully legitimate violets despite their yellow petals. Same family tree, same fritillary host role, same spring woodland habit—just wearing the understory’s preferred color.