Roses are red. Violets are blue. But sometimes they can be yellow, too. Or even white. Roughly 20 species of violets grow in Illinois, and many have heart-shaped leaves with five petals on blooms ...

The other day, I was photographing a large clump of common blue violets on a neighbor’s lawn when she remarked that they were pretty, but “mostly weeds.” I said I know that violets can be banes of ...

Even if you’ve never seen violets growing wild, you probably have a mental image of them. Low-growing plants with heart-shaped leaves and pretty dark blue flowers, right? Well, that’s true for a ...

As signs of summer begin to establish, we notice the showers of spring bringing more than just flowers. Grasses, weeds, and general overgrowth seem to appear almost overnight. Bustling automobiles add ...

There's something enchanting about blue blooms running through the landscape. In fact, it can be exciting to let a blue-flowering volunteer keep the space. After all, what could go wrong? Turns out, ...

And it opens the door to more questions about the impact of climate change on flowering plants. Future research might study how the genetic makeup of common blue violet populations changes in response ...

Common blue violets are named that way for a reason. They pop up naturally in gardens all over Missouri and the central and eastern parts of the U.S. “You probably have it in your backyard just like I ...