Favoritos de artemesia

This plant was previously listed as Viola sororia f. priceana. It is now listed as V. communis f. priceana - see Harvey Ballard's explanation here: https://people.ohio.edu/ballardh/vgpena/. As he notes on that page, "Two floral color forms comprise this species, the typical f. communis with violet to purple corollas and indistinct purple nectarguides, and the Confederate Violet. The latter was first described as V. priceana Pollard and was recognized first as a species, then as a variety under V. papilionacea, and more recently by Cooperrider (1984) as a form under V. sororia. The new combination for V. priceana under V. communis is published in the account for f. priceana. The two floral forms are indistinguishable except for corolla color pattern and flower size (f. priceana is typically a bit larger, perhaps a pleiotropic effect of the partial albinism) but are commonly found growing together." You can see in this observation that both forms are intermixed.

Growing on 340 million year old novaculite along the Ouachita River, which is basically just biogenic silica formed from the "siliceous ooze" composed of trillions of bodies of radiolarians and diatoms at the bottom of an ancient ocean

The "nearby" observations are obscured so I'm not sure if these all came from a single location. In the early 1990s, I believe there was only one known site on the Sylamore Ranger District of the Ozark National Forest. I looked a specimens in several Arkansas herbaria at that time. Most had rather poor location information since GPS was not used and they often mentioned the nearby campground. I suspect someone will obscure this location.

In my experience, of the eight specimens I looked at, only one hinted at the frequency and said, "13 plants." I wondered, "Had botanists collected eight of the 13 plants?" so I visited the site and found about 20-30, making my own top-snatched collection. I walked up the nearby bluff and found another colony overhanging the top of the bluff, making it difficult to approach. Most plants were near the drop-off and the closer I got to them, the fewer branches were trustworthy to hold on to and the steeper and more slippery the ground became. I do remember doing something (photo? collecting?) and reported the new colony to the district. I wanted to visit the site today and found about 50 flowering stems mostly within 1-2 meters and a few nearby scattered plants. I didn't climb the bluff. They were on the lower bluff close to the stream. So, this site is well known to Arkansas botanists. Today, I took only pictures. I rarely collect anything!