Picture-perfect pansies
Pansies, the strikingly colourful flowers with ‘faces’ and a coolweather favourite, provide a blanket of cheer to any garden, writes Elaine Yim
IF you’re planning on touring the cooler regions of the world, such as the Northern Hemisphere or even Cameron Highlands this Hari Raya and during the school holidays, chances are you will come across many public spaces planted with these brightly-coloured flowers with interesting and expressive “faces”.
The “faces” can appear adorable, mischievous or cheerful — depending on how you look at them. I’ve even spotted “faces” that remind me of bow-ties and a monkey’s face!
So what is this flower? It’s a pansy.
Pansy is derived from the French word pensees meaning thoughts or reflection. Its genus name Viola is Latin for violet while wittrockiana honours Veit Brecher Wittrock (1839-1914), a Swedish psychologist-cumbotanist.
The Violaceae family has more than 800 species of flowering herbs, shrubs and small trees grouped into 25 genera, which include pansies and violets.
Garden pansies produced from V. tricolor are also known as Viola tricolor var. hortensis or Viola section Melanium.
V. lutea, also known as mountain pansy, has yellow flowers while V. altaica, the Altaian violet, has purple flowers.
V. tricolor, also known as the European wild pansy, is a common wildflower in Europe. It has many other interesting names such as heartsease, heart ease, heart’s delight, Johny-jump-up, ticklemy-fancy, three-faces-in-a-hood and lovein-idleness. The flowers come in various colours such as blue, purple, white or yellow.
V. tricolor is a medicinal plant used as a traditional remedy for epilepsy, skin and respiratory diseases.
This pansy was mentioned in the Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The juice of the heartsease, which maidens back in those days called the “love-in-idleness” flower, was used to make a potent love potion. A single drop of this potion was believed to cause instant love-sickness.
In the same play, Shakespeare also related an ancient Greek legend about the pansy flower which was originally pure white. After it was accidentally struck by Cupid’s arrow, the centre of the flower turned dark purple and its juice became a powerful love potion.
Garden pansies are short-lived perennials but they’re usually cultivated as annuals or biennials in temperate and warm temperate regions.
In cooler climates, the flowers are produced abundantly from early spring while in warmer places, the flowers help to brighten up the winter months.
The optimum temperature should be 10-23°C.
Pansies are non-heat tolerant, hence they’re planted in semi-shade. They wilt easily under the hot sun. The seeds are sown outdoors in mid-summer, transplanted to flower beds in autumn. In winter, the young plants are protected with mulch. The following spring, the garden will be a sea of blooming pansies.
Garden pansies are ideally applied in
mass-planting as an edging, border or bedding plant under trees and shrubs such asroses.
They do well in the ground, hanging baskets, window boxes and containers. The soil should be light, rich and well-drained. Garden pansies can grow to about 25cm. The flowers are scented. Their sizes vary from 2.5-10cm in diameter depending on the cultivar. They come in a variety of colours, mix-colour combinations, shades and markings on the petals.
Pottedpansiesarenotsoldinthiscountry. Some gardeners have experimented with planting heat and disease-resistant pansies from seeds purchased online with limited success. The flowers are few and smaller and the plants do not survive long.