Pansy
Flower - Common name: Pansy, Pansy Violet, Botanical name: Viola x wittrockiana
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The Pansy is cultivated as a garden flower. These flowers are available in a huge range of colours. The name pansy is from the French word pensée, meaning thought or remembrance. The dark centers in some flowers are thought to resemble little faces.
Pansies can be distinguished from Violets in that while the petals of Violets may have dark lines on them, Pansy flowers have big blotches that make them strongly resemble faces. However, with more and more new cultivars of both being created, the distinction has somewhat blurred. The modern Garden Pansy (V. × wittrockiana) is a plant of complex hybrid origin involving at least three species, V. tricolor (Wild Pansy or Heartsease), V. altaica and V. lutea. (Source: "http://www.flowersofindia.net/)
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The common words
"pansy" and "violet" are often used interchangably. When a
distinction is made, plants considered to be pansies have four petals pointing
upwards, and only one pointing down. Violets have three petals pointing up and
two pointing down. Thus Viola cornuta is commonly referred to as a pansy.
However, modern horticulturalists tend to use the term "pansy" for
those multi-coloured large-flowered hybrids that are grown for bedding purposes
every year, while "viola" is usually reserved for smaller, more
delicate annuals and perennials...
On account of its popularity in both society and
its recurring appearances in Romantic poetry, a variety of new nicknames for
the flower began to circulate. Dorothea Lynde Dix proclaims that “Perhaps no
flower (not excepting even the queenly rose) claims to be so universal a
favorite, as the viola tricolor; none currently has been honored with so rich a
variety of names, at once expressive of grace, delicacy and tenderness.” Many
of these names play on the whimsical nature of love, including “Three Faces
under a Hood,” “Flame Flower,” “Jump Up and Kiss Me,” “Flower of Jove,” and
“Pink of my John.” (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansy)
