Heart's Ease - 2022 Herb of the Year™

 

Viola tricolor easily self-sews
.(Photo: MurielBendel, CC BY-SA 4.0) 

Heart’s Ease, also called Johnny-Jump Up, is the 2022 Herb of the Year™ of the International Herb Association. This delicate little woodland herb will jump up out of the warming spring earth in April. It is in the violet family (Violaceae) and parent of cultivated pansies. The herb is native to Europe and came to the United States with the colonists.

They are good container and edging plants, a lovely addition planted amid spring bulbs. The edible blossoms are interesting garnishes and decorations and are reported to have a wintergreen flavor. The face-like flowers draw bumblebees and honeybees for nectar and pollen.

This plant is an annual, biennial, or short-lived perennial depending on where it is grown in the USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 3-8. The flowers can produce up to 50 seeds in each capsule and will easily self-sow, but it is not invasive. It prefers well-drained, moist soil and will grow in full sun to partial shade.

The plant grows from 6 to 8 inches tall. The flowers have 2 lips and are tri-colored, as the name implies, in violet, white and yellow. The drooping head allows rain and dew to fall on the back of the flower. Its leaves have a variety of shapes. The lower blades are heart shaped and the middle and upper leaves are oblong ending in a point. Unlike some other violets there is no leaf rosette at the base. 

The many other names for this plant include wild pansy, call-me-to-you, and come-and-cuddle-me. It is linked to Cupid in Roman mythology and is often associated with affection and love.  The name pansy comes from the French word pensée, which means thought and its drooping head, suggesting deep in thought, relates to the florist’s symbolism of thought.

Pansy (Photo: Laurie Collins)

In Midsummers Night Dream Oberon says:  

Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell,

It fell upon a little western flower,

Before milk-white, now purple with loves wound,

And maidens call it love-in-idleness

The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid

Will make a man or woman madly doat

Upon the next live creature that it sees.

CKagan, Master Gardener

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