The state flower of Illinois, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Wisconsin, Viola sororia is a stemless herbaceous perennial plant that is native to eastern North America.
Beyond its use as a common lawn and garden plant, Viola sororia has historically been used for food and for medicine. The flowers and leaves are edible, and some sources suggest the roots can also be eaten. The Cherokee used it to treat colds and headaches. Rafinesque, in his Medical Flora, a Manual of the Medical Botany of the United States of North America (1828 – 1830), wrote of Viola sororia being used by his American contemporaries for coughs, sore throats, and constipation.
Besides Common blue violet, Viola sororia is also known as ‘common meadow violet,’ ‘purple violet,’ ‘woolly blue violet,’ ‘hooded violet,’ ‘wood violet,’ and ‘lesbian flower.’
In the early 1900s, lesbian women would give violets to the women they were wooing. This symbolized their “Sapphic” desire, so called because Sappho, a Greek lyric poet, in one of her poems described herself and her lover as wearing garlands of violet.
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