Johnny-jump-up
Viola tricolor
This Old World native flowers in spring and remains popular in American gardens where it has been grown since the 1600's.
Common Names: Johnny-Jump-Up, Heartsease, Wild Pansy, Ladies' Delight, Jump-Up-And-Kiss-Me
Thomas Jefferson recorded "Tricolor" seeds sown at Shadwell, his boyhood home, on April 2, 1767.[fnGarden Book, 1766-1824, page 2, by Thomas Jefferson [electronic edition], Thomas Jefferson Papers: An Electronic Archive (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2003). See also Betts, Garden Book, 4.[/fn] The plant was grown in American gardens before 1700, although the first known documented citation is by John Lawson in his History of Carolina (1718).1
Native over large areas of Europe and western Asia, this ancestor of our modern pansy has many common names, including wild pansy, ladies' delight, and jump-up-and-kiss-me. The name "pansy" derives from the French word pensée, an association used by Ophelia in Shakespeare's Hamlet: "and there is pansies, that's for thoughts."2 Darker forms, including types with nearly black petals, such as "Black Violet" and "Bowle's Black," were selected by the late 19th century.
Viola tricolor is a hardy, spring-flowering perennial grown as an annual with charming, pansy-like flowers showing three colors in shades of purple, yellow, and white.
Further Sources
- Betts, Edwin M., Hazlehurst Bolton Perkins, and Peter J. Hatch. Thomas Jefferson's Flower Garden at Monticello, 3rd ed. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986. See especially p. 79.
- Coats, Alice M. Flowers and Their Histories. London: Black, 1968. See especially pp. 264-65.
- Dutton, Joan Parry. Plants of Colonial Williamsburg. Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1979.
- Leighton, Ann. American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986.
- Seeds available for purchase at Monticello Museum Shop.
- Stuart, David and James Sutherland. Plants from the Past: Old Flowers for New Gardens. London: Penguin Books, 1989.
- Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants.
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Heirloom Seeds and Plants from the Monticello collection
Plant history in your gardens with seeds and plants from Monticello and the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants.
Footnotes
- Denise Wiles Adams, Restoring American Gardens: An Encyclopedia of Heirloom Ornamental Plants, 1640-1940 (Portland, Oregon: Timber Press, Inc., 2004), 232. See John Lawson, The History of Carolina: Containing the Exact Description and Natural History of That Country ... Etc. (London: Warner, 1718).
- Hamlet, Act IV, Scene V.