Viola tricolor

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For the Theodor Storm novella, see Viola Tricolor (novella).
"Heartsease" redirects here. For the settlements, see Heartsease, Powys and Heartsease Estate, Norwich.

Heartsease
Violatricolorarvensis.jpg
Scientific classification edit
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Rosids
Order: Malpighiales
Family: Violaceae
Genus: Viola
Species:
V. tricolor
Binomial name
Viola tricolor

Viola tricolor, Also known as Johnny Jump up (though this name is also applied to similar species such as the yellow pansy), heartsease, heart's ease, heart's delight, tickle-my-fancy, Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me, come-and-cuddle-me, three faces in a hood, or love-in-idleness, is a common European wild flower, growing as an annual or short-lived perennial. It has been introduced into North America, where it has spread. It is the progenitor of the cultivated pansy, and is therefore sometimes called wild pansy; before the cultivated pansies were developed, "pansy" was an alternative name for the wild form. It can produce up to 50 seeds at a time.

Heartsease flowers.
Flowers of Viola tricolor

Description

Viola tricolor is a small plant of creeping and ramping[lower-alpha 1] habit, reaching at most 15 cm in height, with flowers about 1.5 cm in diameter. It grows in short grassland on farms and wasteland, chiefly on acid or neutral soils. It is usually found in partial shade.

It flowers from April to September (in the northern hemisphere). The flowers can be purple, blue, yellow or white. They are hermaphrodite and self-fertile, pollinated by bees.

Traditional uses

As some of its names imply,[citation needed] heartsease has a long history of use in herbalism. It has been recommended, among other uses, for epilepsy, asthma, skin diseases, and eczema.[1] V. tricolor has a history in folk medicine of helping respiratory problems such as bronchitis, asthma, and cold symptoms.[2]

It has expectorant properties, and so has been used in the treatment of chest complaints such as bronchitis and whooping cough.[medical citation needed] It is also a diuretic,[3] leading to its use in treating rheumatism and cystitis.[4]

The flowers have also been used to make yellow, green and blue-green dyes,[5] while the leaves can be used to indicate acidity.[citation needed]

Roman mythology

According to Roman mythology, the wild pansy turned into the Love-in-idleness as Cupid shot one of his arrows at the imperial votaress, but missed and instead struck it. As Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love, the flower’s juice received the trait, to act as a love potion. Its name relates to the use of the flower, as it is often used for idleness or vileness acts.

Literature

Long before cultivated pansies were released into the trade in 1839, V. tricolor was associated with thought in the "language of flowers", often by its alternative name of pansy (from the French pensée “thought”[citation needed]): hence Ophelia's often quoted line in Shakespeare's Hamlet, "There's pansies, that's for thoughts". (What Shakespeare had in mind was V. tricolor, the wild pansy, not a modern garden pansy.)

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Shakespeare makes a more direct reference, probably to V. tricolor[lower-alpha 2] in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Oberon sends Puck to gather "a little western flower that maidens call love-in-idleness". Oberon's account is that he diverted an arrow from Cupid's bow aimed at "a fair vestal, throned by the west" (supposedly Queen Elizabeth I) to fall upon the plant "before milk-white, now purple with love's wound". The "imperial vot'ress" passes on "fancy-free", destined never to fall in love.

In Act II and III, Oberon’s and Puck’s intervention with the magic love potion of the flower, they can control the fates of various characters, but also speed up the process of falling in and out of love, so that the actual romances of the lovers and their love itself appears to become very comical. Shakespeare uses the flower to provide the essential dramatic and comical features for his play. Besides that the love potion gained from the flower, does not only interfere with the lovers fates, but also gives the play structure as it affects the lovers' romances drastically, as it at first upsets the balance of love and creates asymmetrical love among the four Athenian lovers. The fact that this flower introduces magical love to this play creates the potential for many possible outcomes for this play.

The juice of the heartsease now, claims Oberon, "on sleeping eyelids laid, Will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next live creature that it sees." Equipped with such powers, Oberon and Puck control the fates of various characters in the play to provide Shakespeare's essential dramatic and comic structure for the play.

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Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before, milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.

A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act 2, Scene 1)

The love-in-idleness was originally a white flower, struck by one of Cupid’s arrows, which turned it purple and gave it its magic love potion. When dripped onto someone's eyelids this love potion causes an individual to fall madly in love with the next person they see. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare uses this flower as a plot device to introduce the comical disturbance and chaos of love, but also to highlight the irrationality of romantic love. Here love is depicted as a sort of benevolent affliction. Shakespeare presents love to be something contradicting to one’s normal feelings and ideas. However he also depicts the fact that those can lead to foolish and hurtful things and present the idea that love can also end in tragedy. The play shows that love can be a source of comedy as easily as of tragedy and therefore show that the power that the love potion from the Love-in-idleness inherits is beyond the comprehension of the fairies and mortals. In the end, the love-in-idleness nectar is used to restore all romances in the play to their original states (including Demetrius' prior affections for Helena before he turned to Hermia.)

The effects of the love-in-idleness can be very dramatic and tragic, no matter if the intentions were right. The play reaches its point at which Demetrius and Lysander are trying to kill one another. Although Hermia and Helena are not trying to kill one another, they are suffering from the rejection of their lovers and considerable verbal abuse. However this still happened at a very comical level as the lovers were not aware of their situation. Again the more they were trying to present the dramatic side of love, the hate, jealousy and anger, the less they became serious and so their anger turned unreal. In the end love is not denied and the lovers are back together. Nevertheless, Shakespeare ends the lover’s story as a comedy, with the inclusion of several tragic and dramatic moments. This is supposed to show that love can be a source of comedy as easily as of tragedy and therefore show that the power that the love potion from the Love-in-idleness inherits is beyond the comprehension of the fairies and mortals.

The Taming of the Shrew

Shakespeare mentions it in his play The Taming of the Shrew where Luciento claims he found the effect of love-in-idleness - alluding to its qualities to simulate the effects of love.

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O Tranio! till I found it to be true,
I never thought it possible or likely;
But see, while idly I stood looking on,
I found the effect of love in idleness;
And now in plainness do confess to thee,
That art to me as secret and as dear
As Anna to the Queen of Carthage was,
Tranio, I burn, I pine, I perish, Tranio,
If I achieve not this young modest girl.

— The Taming of the Shrew (Act 1, Scene 1)

Rossetti uses heartsease as a metaphor of growing older as her confidence and her vision increases. The heartsease is known as love-lies-bleeding which is a type of the inseparability of the pain of living and the love of Christ. The garden was adorn with the flower which served as the speaker’s life. The “weed” represents the sins of the speaker’s life. However at the end, the speaker pleads her pain and waits her judgment.

Heartsease I found, where Love-lies-bleeding

 Empurpled all the ground:

Whatever flowers I missed unheeding,

 Heartsease I found.

 Yet still my garden mound

Stood sore in need of watering, weeding,

 And binding growths unbound.

Ah, when shades fell to light succeeding

 I scarcely dared look round:

‘Love-lies-bleeding’ was all my pleading,

 Heartsease I found.[7]

Chemicals

Viola tricolor in a Norwegian flowerbed

V. tricolor is one of many viola plant species containing cyclotides. These small peptides have proven to be useful in drug development due to their size and structure giving rise to high stability. Many cyclotides, found in Viola tricolor are cytotoxic.[8] This feature means that it could be used to treat cancers.[9][8]

Heartsease contains flavonoid, which is a colorless crystalline compound[10], that is proven to be useful in prophylaxis, which is actions taken to prevent diseases, and in treatment of  cardiovascular problems, complications of diabetes, inflammations, immune disorders, and liver problems, just to list a few indications.[11]

Extracts from the plant are anti-microbial.[12]

V. tricolor extract had anti-inflammatory effect in acute inflammation induced in male Wistar rats.[13]

The plant, especially the flowers, contain antioxidants and are edible.[14]

Plants contain aglycones: apigenin, chrysoeriol, isorhamnetin, kaempferol, luteolin, quercetin[15] and rutin.[16]

The fresh plant Viola declinata and V. tricolor contain approximately

  • saponins (4.40%),
  • mucilages (10.26%),
  • total carotenoids (8.45 mg/100g vegetal product, expressed in β-carotene).[17]

Neuroblastoma, is a type of cancer,[18] is the most common extracranial malignancy in childhood. In many patients, once the tumor starts to develop even with intensive therapy, it will continue to progress. The study is designed to see the effect of Viola tricolor against neuronlastoma N2a cells. In the end, there was no significant change to the cell at first glance.[19]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ It can hoist itself as much as a meter into a dense tangle of other growth.
  2. ↑ The other candidate is "Love-in-a-Mist" or Nigella, a common garden plant of Shakespeare's day, varying in colour from white through pinks to an almost true blue.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Maude Grieve. "Heartsease". Botanical.com.
  2. ↑ Rimkiene S. Ragazinskiene O. Savickiene N. (2003). The cumulation of wild pansy (Viola tricolor L.) accessions: The possibility of species preservation and usage in medicine. Medicina (Kaunas), 39(4):411-416.
  3. ↑ Toiu A., Muntean E., Oniga I., Vostinaru O., & Tamas M. (2009). Pharmacognostic research on Viola tricolor L. (Violaceae). Revista Medico-Chirurgicala a Societatii de Medici Si Naturalisti Din Iasi, 113 (1):264–267 (Jan–Mar 2009).
  4. ↑ T. K. Lim (2014). Edible Medicinal and Non Medicinal Plants: Volume 8, Flowers. Springer. p. 815. doi:10.1007/978-94-017-8748-5. ISBN 978-94-017-8747-5. LCCN 2014936737.
  5. ↑ Terry Breverton (2011). Breverton's Complete Herbal. p. 332. ISBN 978-1-62365-350-7.
  6. ↑ Bull, Henry. (1890). Love in Idleness (Nigella). Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club 1883–1885, pp. 61 ff.
  7. ↑ Frith, Richard (1 March 2014). Literature and Theology. pp. 29–44.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Tang J., Wang C.K., Pan X., Yan H., Zeng G., Xu W., He W., Daly N.L., Craik D.J., Tan N. "Isolation and characterization of cytotoxic cyclotides from Viola tricolor", Peptides 2010 31:8 (1434-1440)
  9. ↑ Erika Svangård, Ulf Göransson, Zozan Hocaoglu, Joachim Gullbo, Rolf Larsson,, Per Claeson and Lars Bohlin, 2004. "Cytotoxic Cyclotides from Viola tricolor" Journal of Natural Products 67 (2), 144-147
  10. ↑ Hine and Martin, Robert and Elizabeth (2016). A Dictionary of Biology (7 ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198714378.
  11. ↑ Havsteen, Bent H (November–December 2002). Pharmacology & Therapeutics. pp. 67–202.
  12. ↑ Witkowska-Banaszczak E, Bylka W, Matławska I, Goślińska O, Muszyński Z, "Antimicrobial activity of Viola tricolor herb". Fitoterapia 76(5):458-461, 2005 Jul.
  13. ↑ Toiu A. Parvu AE. Oniga I. Tamas M."Evaluation of anti-inflammatory activity of alcoholic extract from Viola tricolor.", Revista Medico-Chirurgicala a Societatii de Medici Si Naturalisti Din Iasi. 111(2):525-9, 2007 Apr-Jun.
  14. ↑ Vukics V. Kery A. Guttman A."Analysis of polar antioxidants in Heartsease (Viola tricolor L.) and Garden pansy (Viola x wittrockiana Gams.)". Journal of Chromatographic Science. 46(9):823-7, 2008 Oct.
  15. ↑ Vukics V. Ringer T. Kery A. Bonn GK. Guttman.,"Analysis of heartsease (Viola tricolor L.) flavonoid glycosides by micro-liquid chromatography coupled to multistage mass spectrometry." A. Journal of Chromatography. A. 1206(1):11-20, 2008 Oct 3.
  16. ↑ Vukics V. Toth BH. Ringer T. Ludanyi K. Kery A. Bonn GK. Guttman A.,"Quantitative and qualitative investigation of the main flavonoids in heartsease (Viola tricolor L.)". Journal of Chromatographic Science. 46(2):97-101, 2008 Feb.
  17. ↑ Toiu A., Muntean E., Oniga I., Tǎmaş M. "Pharmacognostic research on Viola declinata Waldst. et Kit. (Violaceae)" Farmacia 2009 57:2 (219-222)
  18. ↑ The American Cancer Society medical and editorial content team (March 19, 2018). "What Is Neuroblastoma?". American Cancer Society. Retrieved May 21, 2018.
  19. ↑ Mortazavian, Seyed Mohsen; Ghorbani, Ahmad (2012). "Antiproliferative effect of Viola tricolor on neuroblastoma cells in vitro". Australian Journal of Herbal Medicine. 24 (3): 93–96. ISSN 2200-3886.

External links

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