Beauty or beast is in eye of beholder

Violets are spotting newly greened lawns with the color purple during these first days of spring. How you look upon this annual phenomenon says a lot about what kind of gardener you are.

To the lawn purist, it is another weedy invasion. To the more light-hearted, it is a delightful indicator of spring -- one more crack in the icy hold of winter.

Whether your definition of violet is wildflower or weed, it is a plant to be reckoned with. They are rich in history, symbolism, culinary and medicinal uses as well as being botanically diverse. There are nearly 500 species, of which 20 percent come from the United States.

The violets you see blooming now are pretty and obvious, but these same plants will bloom again about midsummer, unnoticed by all but those who might be down on their knees tugging at their persistent rhizomes. This second blooming consists of cleistogamous flowers that look like little green buds near the crown of the plant. Cleistogamy means closed marriage and indicates a self-fertilizing flower that never opens into a showy display of colorful petals.

Survival strategy

Colorful petals are for attracting pollinators. This more typical flowering is called chasmogamy, which translates to open marriage -- the marriage being between bee and flower. Cleistogamy is an adaptation that some plants have developed to ensure that they can set seeds if conditions are unfavorable during their regular flowering season. Spring can be a tricky business with late frosts and harsh, windy conditions that make it difficult for bees and butterflies to do the work of pollination. Cleistogamy can be viewed as a kind of insurance policy. This trick is not unique to violets, and you can find it in a couple of other persistent lawn weeds, such as henbit and oxalis.

Another strategy that ensures longevity in the lawn is the violet's growth habit. It manages to creep along on rhizomes, essentially ground-level stems. Pieces of these structures tend to stay behind no matter how thoroughly you may think you have excavated.

The violet flower seems animated as well. It will turn its "face" toward the sun when the time is ripe to attract pollinators and nod toward the earth when a threat of rain might jeopardize the nectar reward. If you examine a violet flower you will see a rounded knob at the back called a nectar spur, a deep well that bees and butterflies probe into, pollinating the flower in the process. Insects perform some acrobatic positioning to reach this sweet liquid, bees often standing on their heads.

Violets have a long entanglement in human history. The Romans considered them a symbol of mourning and decorated tombs with violets during the Violaria, a festival of violets at the end of March. In Christian symbolism violets represented Mary's humility, perhaps because the flower nods so closely to the earth. The violet is said to be a symbol of the strength of Mohammed's teaching. In the Middle Ages it indicated faithfulness in love and carried this meaning forward to the Victorian era and the language of flowers.

Violets were of importance to herbalists as well, being employed to combat epilepsy, pleurisy and inflammation of the lungs among many other ailments.

In 1280, Bartholomaeus Anglicus wrote, "Violet is a little hearbe in substance, and is better fresh and newe, then when it is olde, and the flower therof smelleth most, and so the smell thereof abateth heate of the braine, and refresheth and comforteth the spirites of feeling and maketh sleepe, for it cooleth and and tempereth and moysteneth the braine". Perhaps this was the start of aromatherapy.

In the early 1600s, Gervase Markham, a Welsh adviser to all matters of husbandry, talked in his book Countrie Farme of a kind of violet cure for those who had been assaulted. "He that shall have taken a blow upon the head, so that it hath astonished him, shall not have anie greater hurt, if presently after such a blow he drinke Violet flowers stampt, and continue the same drinke for a certaine time."

"Astonished" at this point in time means knocked unconscious. Markham was also among many herbalists who prescribed the violet as a hangover cure. "The flowers of March Violets applied unto the brows, doe assuage the headach, which commeth of too much drinking and procure sleepe."

The violet is rich in both vitamins C and A, containing by weight three times as much vitamin C as oranges.

If you still don't want violets in your lawn there are ways to remove them. First, there is hand digging, the most environmentally friendly method. Paul Tukey, the author of Organic Lawn Care, writes that violets indicate low pH and that liming may help control them. If you do not use organic methods, broad-leaf herbicides are the traditional method to kill violets. Once they are out of the lawn, paying attention to mowing height will aid in their control. Many weeds will be shaded out of the lawn if mower heights are kept at the maximum level.

Whether you are prone to pick, spray or "apply violets to your brow," it is hard not to appreciate a flower so thoroughly entangled with human history and endeavor.

■ If you have a gardening question or story idea, write to David Bare in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27101-3159, or send e-mail to his attention to gardening@wsjournal.com.