Viola albaBesser

White Violet

WFO wfo-0000426240 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Viola alba, photographed by Дауд Арсанукаев
fig. a Дауд Арсанукаев, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-04-11 / obs. 187480159
Viola alba, photographed by Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky)
fig. b Юрий Данилевский (Yuriy Danilevsky), CC BY 4.0 / obs. 187852179
Viola alba, photographed by Иван Ковтун Ivan Kovtun
fig. c Иван Ковтун Ivan Kovtun, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 185656190
Viola alba, photographed by Dimitǎr Boevski
fig. d Dimitǎr Boevski, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 183388729
Viola alba, photographed by Michiel de Groot
fig. e Michiel de Groot, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 180572092
Viola alba, photographed by Juan José de Haro
fig. f Juan José de Haro, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 180081803
Viola alba, photographed by Марина Садыкова
fig. g Марина Садыкова, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 126947159
Viola alba, photographed by ponpon42
fig. h ponpon42, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 118578297

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 30 botanical countries

Regions where Viola alba is native: Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Cyprus, East Aegean Is., Iraq, Lebanon-Syria, North Caucasus, Transcaucasus, Türkiye, Albania, Austria, Baleares, Bulgaria, Corse, Czechia-Slovakia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kriti, Krym, NW. Balkan Pen., Poland, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Türkiye-in-Europe, Ukraine AlgeriaMoroccoTunisiaCyprusEast Aegean Is.IraqLebanon-SyriaNorth CaucasusTranscaucasusTürkiyeAlbaniaAustriaBulgariaCorseCzechia-SlovakiaFranceGermanyGreeceHungaryItalyKritiKrymNW. Balkan Pen.PolandRomaniaSpainSwitzerlandTürkiye-in-EuropeUkraine Baleares
Native distribution of Viola alba, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Albania ALB EUROPE
Austria AUT
Baleares BAL
Bulgaria BUL
Corse COR
Czechia-Slovakia CZE
France FRA
Germany GER
Greece GRC
Hungary HUN
Italy ITA
Kriti KRI
Krym KRY
NW. Balkan Pen. YUG
Poland POL
Romania ROM
Spain SPA
Switzerland SWI
Türkiye-in-Europe TUE
Ukraine UKR
Cyprus CYP ASIA-TEMPERATE
East Aegean Is. EAI
Iraq IRQ
Lebanon-Syria LBS
North Caucasus NCS
Transcaucasus TCS
Türkiye TUR
Algeria ALG AFRICA
Morocco MOR
Tunisia TUN

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 517 in flower of 551 examined

Peak flowering in Mar. Each bar is the share of Viola alba observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 517 of 551 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 13 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Viola alba subsp. thessala (Boiss. & Spruner) Hayek
  • Viola alba var. albiflora Wiesb. ex Dichtl
  • Viola alba var. violacea Wiesb. ex Dichtl
  • Viola armena Boiss. & A.Huet
  • Viola cadevallii Pau
  • Viola cretica Boiss. & Heldr.
  • Viola dehnhardtii Ten.
  • Viola lauzuricae Marcet
  • Viola pentelica Vierh.
  • Viola praecox Heuff. ex Fuss
  • Viola scotophylla Jord.
  • Viola thessala Boiss. & Spruner
  • Viola virescens Jord. ex Boreau

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.