Pansy

The name "pansy" is derived from the French word pensée, "thought", and was imported into Late Middle English as a name of Viola in the mid-15th century, as the flower was regarded as a symbol of remembrance. The name "love in idleness" was meant to imply the image of a lover who has little or no other employment than to think of his beloved.[7]

The name "heart's-ease" came from St. Euphrasia, whose name in Greek signifies cheerfulness of mind. The woman, who refused marriage and took the veil, was considered a pattern of humility, hence the name "humble violet".[7]

In Scandinavia,[8] Scotland, and German-speaking countries, the pansy (or its wild parent Viola tricolor) is or was known as the "stepmother"; the name was accompanied by an aitiological tale about a selfish stepmother, told to children while the teller plucked off corresponding parts of the blossom to fit the plot.[9]

In Italy the pansy is known as flammola (little flame).[10]

Aphids, which can spread the cucumber mosaic virus, sometimes feed on pansies.

Leaf spot (Ramularia deflectens) is a fungal infection. Symptoms include dark spots on leaf margins followed by a white web covering the leaves. It is associated with cool damp springs.

Pansy downy mildew is caused by the fungus-like organism Peronospora violae, which produces purple-brown leaf spots, often with encircling yellowing, that have an accompanying grey mold on the leaf underside. It can severely weaken or kill affected plants.[16]

A disease caused by one or more species of fungus in the Erysiphaceae family.[17] Symptoms include violet-gray powder on fringes and underside of leaves. It is encouraged by stagnant air and can be limited but not necessarily eliminated by fungicide application.

A pansy exhibiting the flower's morphology: two large petals overlapping at the top, two side petals, a lower petal with slight indentation, and beards at the center

Slugs and snails feed on the foliage.

Stem rot, also known as pansy sickness, is a soil-borne fungus and a possible hazard with unsterilized animal manure. The plant may collapse without warning in the middle of the season. The foliage will flag and lose color. Flowers will fade and shrivel prematurely. Stem will snap at the soil line if tugged slightly. The plant is probably a total loss unless tufted. The treatment of stem rot includes the use of fungicides such as Cheshunt or Benomyl, which are used prior to planting. Infected plants are destroyed (burned) to prevent the spread of the pathogen to other plants.

The cucumber mosaic virus is transmitted by aphids. Pansies with the virus have fine yellow veining on young leaves, stunted growth and anomalous flowers. The virus can lay dormant, affect the entire plant and be passed to next generations and to other species. Prevention is key: purchases should consist entirely of healthy plants.

Bookbinding embroidered by Elizabeth I in 1544 for her stepmother Katherine Parr with heartsease depicted in each corner

The pansy's connection to pious humility is mentioned by Harte, who writes: "From brute beasts humility I learned;/And in the pansy’s life God’s providence discerned".[10] Gifford evokes both Christian and classical undertones, writing how "Pansies – still,/More blest than me, thus shall ye live/Your little day, – and when ye die,/Sweet flowers! The grateful muse/Shall give a verse".[10] Smart proposes "Were it not for thee, oh sun,/Those pansies, that reclining from the bank/View through the immaculate, pellucid stream,/Their portraiture in the inverted Heaven,/Might as well change their triple boast, the white,/The purple, and the gold".[10]

On account of its popularity in both society and its recurring appearances in Romantic poetry, a variety of new nicknames for the flower began to circulate. Dorothea Lynde Dix proclaims that “Perhaps no flower (not excepting even the queenly rose) claims to be so universal a favorite, as the viola tricolor; none currently has been honored with so rich a variety of names, at once expressive of grace, delicacy and tenderness.”[10] Many of these names play on the whimsical nature of love, including “Three Faces under a Hood,” “Flame Flower,” “Jump Up and Kiss Me,” “Flower of Jove,” and “Pink of my John.”[18]

In Hamlet, Ophelia distributes flowers with the remark, "There's pansies, that's for thoughts" (IV.5). Other poets referencing the pansy include Ben Jonson, Bernard Barton, Michael Drayton, Edmund Spenser, William Wakefield, and William Wordsworth.

"Pensée" from Fleurs Animées by J. J. Grandville (1803–1847)

Nathaniel Hawthorne published his last literary effort, an unfinished piece, entitled Pansie, a Fragment, sometimes called Little Pansie, a fragment in 1864. D. H. Lawrence's Pansies: Poems by D. H. Lawrence was published in 1929, and Margaret Mitchell originally chose Pansy as the name of her Gone with the Wind heroine, but settled on Scarlett just before the book went into print.

The word "pansy" has indicated an effeminate male since Elizabethan times and its usage as a disparaging term for a man or boy who is effeminate, as well as for an avowedly homosexual man, is still used. The word "ponce" (which has now come to mean a pimp) and the adjective "poncey" (effeminate) also derive from "pansy".

In the visual arts, Pierre-Joseph Redouté painted Bouquet of Pansies in 1827, and, in 1874, Henri Fantin-Latour painted Still Life with Pansies. In 1887, van Gogh painted Mand met viooltjes, and, in 1926, Georgia O'Keeffe created a painting of a black pansy called simply, Pansy and followed it with White Pansy in 1927. J. J. Grandville created a fantasy flower called Pensée in his Fleurs Animées.

Mand met viooltjes (Vincent van Gogh, 1887)

Because its name means "thought", the pansy was chosen as a symbol of Freethought[19] and has been used in the literature of the American Secular Union. Humanists use it too, as the pansy's current appearance was developed from the heartsease by two centuries of intentional crossbreeding of wild plant hybrids. The specific colors of the flower – purple, yellow, and white – are meant to symbolize memories, loving thoughts and souvenirs, respectively.[9] The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) uses the pansy symbol extensively in its lapel pins and literature. The flower has long been associated with human manner, as one man cleverly stated: “Nature sports as much with the colours of this little flower as she does with the features of the human countenance.”[18]

Greeting Card, c. 1900

In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the "juice of the heartsease" is a love potion and "on sleeping eyelids laid, will make a man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees." (II.1).

In the language of flowers, a honeyflower and a pansy left by a lover for his beloved means, "I am thinking of our forbidden love". In 1858, the writer James Shirley Hibberd wrote that the French custom of giving a bride a bouquet of pansies (thoughts) and marigolds (cares) symbolized the woes of domestic life rather than marital bliss.[20]

A German fable tells of how the pansy lost its perfume. Originally pansies would have been very fragrant, growing wild in fields and forests.[9] It was said that people would trample the grass completely in eagerness to pick pansies. Unfortunately, the people’s cows were starving due to the ruined fields, so the pansy prayed to give up her perfume. Her prayer was answered, and without her perfumed scent, the fields grew tall, and the cows grew fat on the fresh green grass.[9]

American pioneers thought that “a handful of violets taken into the farmhouse in the spring ensured prosperity, and to neglect this ceremony brought harm to baby chicks and ducklings.”[9] On account of its place in American hearts, a game called “Violet War” also arose. In this game, two players would intertwine the hooks where the pansy blossoms meet the stems, then attempt to pull the two flowers apart like wishbones. Whoever pulled off the most of their opponent’s violet heads was proclaimed the winner.[9] Young American settlers also made pansy dolls by lining up the pansy flower “faces”, pasting on leaf skirts and twig arms to complete the figures.[9]

The pansy is also used in phytotherapy.[21]