The common violet usually blooms in late winter or early spring. The flower is usually blue-violet, but some varieties can be white or yellow. Violets also produce non-opening, self-pollinating flowers close to the ground ensuring plenty of seed and a weedy tendency to sprout up in unexpected places. They can also spread through underground rhizomes. Feel free to remove them; you will have replacement seedlings. Keep in mind that most perennial flowers have a relatively short bloom period only once each year. Here is an ARTICLE listing the longest flowering perennials.

Are you a perfect lawn person? The violets will seed around prodigiously; if you want grass, grass and only grass in your lawn then you need to remove every last violet.

our experience with apps has been very negative .. of course.. the only peeps who post about it.. come here because they didnt work ...

we should probably start with a pic or two.. to at least find out if they are violets.. and you should return when you have a pic of a flower ...

in general.. violets have their use .. and a downside ...

but we really have no way of advising you.. since we dont know your goals with your garden ... perhaps a pic or two of such.. will get you a discussion of what your general plan should be.. and where you might go.. and after that.. we can decide what value the violets might have to you ...

but... all that said.. you can go ahead and TRY to remove them all ... and by next spring.. i predict a quarter of them will be back .. .lol.... so if you need the exercise.. go for it ...

and if you want to talk about your garden in general.. perhaps a new post in the annual and perennial forums will get you a wider audience..

but most importantly.. we need to know where you are for best advice.. big city name is good enough ..

ken

On the subject of violets, does anyone successfully use them as a groundcover? Will they fill in an area reliably?

They are EXTREMELY aggressive. In lawns, beds, in the crowns of rare plants--and the more you have the more you get.

Kitasei there is a house near me whose lawn is, oh, maybe one third violets. A good 20x20 feet at least. Most of the year you would never know as you drive by, as it's all green, but in spring that third of his "lawn" is glorious. Granted, this is a house I only drive by, so I don't know how it looks close up, (sparse, lush, bare, full, etc.) but when in bloom it's pretty packed with blooms. I also can't quite tell what kind of violets they are - wild, cultivated, etc - except to say there are white ones mixed in as well.

:)
Dee

LOL! When I saw the title for this thread, the image that popped into my mind was my grandmother in the early 1960s showing me ‘the king on his throne washing his feet’ that is hidden in the flower of violets! Wild violets grew in damp places in the pastures at my maternal grandparents‘ farm. The violets stopped spreading when the soil conditions got drier. When we moved here 20 years ago, there were some violets under the trees - at first I left them alone for nostalgia reasons but they multiplied a bit too fast so I eventually removed them... There are a lot of houses around here that have lots of violets in lawns, particularly in damp and/or shady areas. Most end up trying to remove them - with varying degrees of success!

(To see ‘the king on his throne washing his feet’ take a single violet flower, turn it so that the three large petals are upright and the other two petals curve downward over the sort of bulbous bit at the back of the flower. Remove the two petals over this structure. Then you can see the fat green pistil with the gold of the pollen at the top - that is the ‘king’ with his gold crown... The three large petal behind him is the ‘throne’ and the bulbous bit at the base is the basin where he is washing his feet! :-) If you have violets and young children or grandchildren, try looking for the king in the violet flowers - I’ll bet it amuses them!)

I've used violets as a groundcover. They're tough as nails, and few weeds could get a foothold, so that was good. I could dig out a hole for the occasional perennial or shrub. But do be aware they will spread into your lawn, so I'd only use violets where you have a good wide natural barrier to contain them.

woodyoak, I copied your instructions and will try searching for the king next year.