Viola tricolor, Also known as Johnny Jump up (though this name is also applied to similar species such as the yellow pansy), heartsease, heart's ease, heart's delight, tickle-my-fancy, Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me, come-and-cuddle-me, three faces in a hood, or love-in-idleness, is a common European wild flower, growing as an annual or short-lived perennial. It has been introduced into North America, where it has spread. It is the progenitor of the cultivated pansy, and is therefore sometimes called wild pansy; before the cultivated pansies were developed, "pansy" was an alternative name for the wild form.
Video Viola tricolor
Description
Viola tricolor is a small plant of creeping and ramping habit, reaching at most 15 cm in height, with flowers about 1.5 cm in diameter. It grows in short grassland on farms and wasteland, chiefly on acid or neutral soils. It is usually found in partial shade.
It flowers from April to September (in the northern hemisphere). The flowers can be purple, blue, yellow or white. They are hermaphrodite and self-fertile, pollinated by bees.
Maps Viola tricolor
Traditional uses
As some of its names imply, heartsease has a long history of use in herbalism. It has been recommended, among other uses, for epilepsy, asthma, skin diseases, and eczema. V. tricolor has a history in folk medicine of helping respiratory problems such as bronchitis, asthma, and cold symptoms.
It has expectorant properties, and so has been used in the treatment of chest complaints such as bronchitis and whooping cough. It is also a diuretic, leading to its use in treating rheumatism and cystitis.
The flowers have also been used to make yellow, green and blue-green dyes, while the leaves can be used to indicate acidity.
Roman mythology
According to Roman mythology, the wild pansy turned into the Love-in-idleness as Cupid shot one of his arrows at the imperial votaress, but missed and instead struck it. As Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love, the flower's juice received the trait, to act as a love potion. Its name relates to the use of the flower, as it is often used for idleness or vileness acts.
Shakespearean folklore
Long before cultivated pansies were released into the trade in 1839, V. tricolor was associated with thought in the "language of flowers", often by its alternative name of pansy (from the French pensée "thought"): hence Ophelia's often quoted line in Shakespeare's Hamlet, "There's pansies, that's for thoughts". (What Shakespeare had in mind was V. tricolor, the wild pansy, not a modern garden pansy.)
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare makes a more direct reference, probably to V. tricolor in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Oberon sends Puck to gather "a little western flower that maidens call love-in-idleness". Oberon's account is that he diverted an arrow from Cupid's bow aimed at "a fair vestal, throned by the west" (supposedly Queen Elizabeth I) to fall upon the plant "before milk-white, now purple with love's wound". The "imperial vot'ress" passes on "fancy-free", destined never to fall in love.
In Act II and III, Oberon's and Puck's intervention with the magic love potion of the flower, they can control the fates of various characters, but also speed up the process of falling in and out of love, so that the actual romances of the lovers and their love itself appears to become very comical. Shakespeare uses the flower to provide the essential dramatic and comical features for his play. Besides that the love potion gained from the flower, does not only interfere with the lovers fates, but also gives the play structure as it affects the lovers' romances drastically, as it at first upsets the balance of love and creates asymmetrical love among the four Athenian lovers. The fact that this flower introduces magical love to this play creates the potential for many possible outcomes for this play.
The juice of the heartsease now, claims Oberon, "on sleeping eyelids laid, Will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next live creature that it sees." Equipped with such powers, Oberon and Puck control the fates of various characters in the play to provide Shakespeare's essential dramatic and comic structure for the play.
The love-in-idleness was originally a white flower, struck by one of Cupid's arrows, which turned it purple and gave it its magic love potion. When dripped onto someone's eyelids this love potion causes an individual to fall madly in love with the next person they see. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare uses this flower as a plot device to introduce the comical disturbance and chaos of love, but also to highlight the irrationality of romantic love. Here love is depicted as a sort of benevolent affliction. Shakespeare presents love to be something contradicting to one's normal feelings and ideas. However he also depicts the fact that those can lead to foolish and hurtful things and present the idea that love can also end in tragedy. The play shows that love can be a source of comedy as easily as of tragedy and therefore show that the power that the love potion from the Love-in-idleness inherits is beyond the comprehension of the fairies and mortals. In the end, the love-in-idleness nectar is used to restore all romances in the play to their original states (including Demetrius' prior affections for Helena before he turned to Hermia.)
The effects of the love-in-idleness can be very dramatic and tragic, no matter if the intentions were right. The play reaches its point at which Demetrius and Lysander are trying to kill one another. Although Hermia and Helena are not trying to kill one another, they are suffering from the rejection of their lovers and considerable verbal abuse. However this still happened at a very comical level as the lovers were not aware of their situation. Again the more they were trying to present the dramatic side of love, the hate, jealousy and anger, the less they became serious and so their anger turned unreal. In the end love is not denied and the lovers are back together. Nevertheless, Shakespeare ends the lover's story as a comedy, with the inclusion of several tragic and dramatic moments. This is supposed to show that love can be a source of comedy as easily as of tragedy and therefore show that the power that the love potion from the Love-in-idleness inherits is beyond the comprehension of the fairies and mortals.
The Taming of the Shrew
Shakespeare mentions it in his play The Taming of the Shrew where Luciento claims he found the effect of love-in-idleness - alluding to its qualities to simulate the effects of love.
O Tranio! till I found it to be true,
I never thought it possible or likely;
But see, while idly I stood looking on,
I found the effect of love in idleness;
And now in plainness do confess to thee,
That art to me as secret and as dear
As Anna to the Queen of Carthage was,
Tranio, I burn, I pine, I perish, Tranio,
If I achieve not this young modest girl.
Chemicals
V. tricolor is one of many viola plant species containing cyclotides. These small peptides have proven to be useful in drug development due to their size and structure giving rise to high stability. Many cyclotides, found in Viola tricolor are cytotoxic. This feature means that it could be used to treat cancers.
Extracts from the plant are anti-microbial.
V. tricolor extract had anti-inflammatory effect in acute inflammation induced in male Wistar rats.
The plant, especially the flowers, contain antioxidants and are edible.
Plants contain aglycones: apigenin, chrysoeriol, isorhamnetin, kaempferol, luteolin, quercetin and rutin.
The fresh plant Viola declinata and V. tricolor contain approximately
- saponins (4.40%),
- mucilages (10.26%),
- total carotenoids (8.45 mg/100g vegetal product, expressed in ?-carotene).
See also
- Viola arvensis -- species also sometimes called "heartsease"
- Viola lutea -- species also sometimes called "heartsease"
- Viola ocellata -- species also sometimes called "heartsease"
- Heartsease Maude Grieve
References
External links
- Links to images, collected by the Texas A&M University Bioinformatics Working Group
- Species information in the Plants for a Future database
- Integrated Taxonomic Information System: Viola arvensis
- USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service: Plants profile - Viola tricolor L. (johnny jumpup)
- Viola tricolor Flowers in Sweden
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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