August is an odd month to talk about violas since their showy flowers appear in spring, but there's more to violets than meets the eye - literally. If you're like me, you might be pulling out errant violet plants this summer. They do a nice job of volunteering, I mean there's scads of them. I keep a few for the great spangled fritillary butterfly, who's larvae feeds specifically on violets. As caterpillars go, they are black and white, with small spines and a shiny appearance. Even with my random weeding, it seems that there will always be enough violets. There are 26 species native to Virginia alone.

What I wanted to highlight are the odd underground flowers produced in summer and fall. You will not recognize them as flowers, they look like small white or purple buds attached to thin stalks, all underground. These are cleistogamous flowers, capable of pollinating themselves without forming petals or needing a pollinator. Most flowers are classified as chasmogamous, producing petals, anthers, etc.. and requiring a pollinator to set seed.

The violets do produce these in spring, but actually flower from spring to fall with these odd, underground pseudo-flowers. The word cleistogamous, pronounced klie stog' o mus, comes from the Greek word Kleistos, meaning closed. In the flower world, cleistogamous means "closed marriage" and chasmogamous - "open marriage". As you might imagine, the subsequent CL seedlings are perfect replicas of mom, no second partner involved. In fact even as the plant is forming flowers, up to a point it can determine whether the flowers will be CH or CL, all based on available resources, i.e. pollinators, day-length, water, even herbivore predation.

When resources are compromised, the plant will opt for guaranteed fertility. In a CL flower, the bud development becomes a fusion of sorts with pollen grains germinating alongside anthers and pollen tubes. Yes, it sounds quite kinky!

Some hybridizers like to think that they can better the violet by turning all flowers into CH, essentially creating a violet that blooms from spring to fall (showy flowers for all seasons). Botanists are shaking their heads, but you have to admit, it's a great idea.

There are other CL flowering plants in the world. Orchids, impatiens and some grasses will produce them. The violas are best known for it and darned smart if you asked me. I know there's not a ranking of the top 10 smartest plants in the world, but if there were, I believe the lowly violet would rank in the top 5. Maybe surpassed by the odd parasitic dodder, another brilliantly adaptive plant. But, that's another story.