Viola rostrata – Longspur Violet

One of the first “gems” I came across when I moved back to the Catskills and started looking for wildflowers to collect seeds from was Longspur Violet. It’s one of the most colorful of our native violets with a deep violet eye on its pale violet to white flowers. The lower petal is extended into a pronounced spur that allows easy identification – while other violets have spurs that extend behind the flower, none have a spur as long as this species, hence the common name. The closest is Dog Violet, V. conspersa, and the two sometimes hybridize producing intermediate forms that can be difficult to identify to species