Viola missouriensisGreene

Missouri violet

WFO wfo-0001144421 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 5 observations

This species has been photographed under an open licence only 5 times, so some figures below are different views of the same plant, taken on the same day, rather than different individuals. They are usually different parts of it: the leaf, the flower, the bark.

Viola missouriensis, photographed by John Kees
fig. a John Kees, CC0 1.0 / 2022-03-18 / obs. 183711525
Viola missouriensis, photographed by John Kees
fig. b John Kees, CC0 1.0 / obs. 182794631
Viola missouriensis, photographed by John Kees
fig. c John Kees, CC0 1.0 / obs. 63521871
Viola missouriensis, photographed by Will McFarland
fig. d Will McFarland, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 63052850
Viola missouriensis, photographed by Will McFarland
fig. e Will McFarland, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 32149705
Viola missouriensis, photographed by John Kees
fig. f John Kees, CC0 1.0 / obs. 183711508
Viola missouriensis, photographed by John Kees
fig. g John Kees, CC0 1.0 / obs. 182794482
Viola missouriensis, photographed by John Kees
fig. h John Kees, CC0 1.0 / obs. 63521866

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 19 botanical countries

Regions where Viola missouriensis is native: Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin ArkansasFloridaIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMinnesotaMississippiMissouriNebraskaNew MexicoOklahomaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasVirginiaWisconsin
Native distribution of Viola missouriensis, 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.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Arkansas ARK NORTHERN AMERICA
Florida FLA
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Iowa IOW
Kansas KAN
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Minnesota MIN
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
Nebraska NEB
New Mexico NWM
Oklahoma OKL
South Dakota SDA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG
Wisconsin WIS

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 129 in flower of 143 examined

Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Viola missouriensis 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. 129 of 143 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 7 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 5 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 candidula Nieuwl.
  • Viola illinoensis Greene
  • Viola langloisii Greene
  • Viola langloisii var. pedatiloba Brainerd
  • Viola sororia var. missouriensis (Greene) L.E.McKinney

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.