tags: Heartsease, Gardening, Horticulture, Botany, nature, Helsinki, image of the day
Heartsease is known by a wide variety of names, including the Wild Pansy, Ladies' Delight, Jump-Up-And-Kiss-Me, and Johnny Jump-Up, Viola tricolor.
Photographed on Seurasaari, Helsinki, Finland.
Image: GrrlScientist, 4 July 2009 [larger view]. (raw image)
Native over large areas of Europe and western Asia, this is the ancestor of the modern pansy. I remember Heartsease from watching a live performance of Shakespeare's comedy, A Midsummer's Night Dream in London last year, where Oberon claims that the juice of the Heartsease "on sleeping eyelids laid, Will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next live creature that it sees."
Heartsease has a long history of use in herbalism. It has been used to treat epilepsy, asthma, skin diseases and eczema. Due to its expectorant properties, Heartsease has been used to treat bronchitis and whooping cough as well as other chest illnesses. It is also a diuretic, leading to its use in treating rheumatism and cystitis.
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It looks a bit different from the Heartsease I'm used to seeing in England (some of which I have growing in my garden, seeded from a plant I bought last year) - the yellow on that Finnish one is a lot less extensive, and the whole flower looks slightly large to me (although it's very hard to judge, there's no real scale comparison in that photo).
Still, even the Heartsease in my garden, seeded from a single plant, shows quite a bit of variation. I suppose that variability why it was so easily bred into all the pansy/viola varieties we have today.