Viola purpureaKellogg

Goosefoot violet

WFO wfo-0001144440 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Viola purpurea, photographed by Henrik Kibak
fig. a Henrik Kibak, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-05 / obs. 204143440
Viola purpurea, photographed by James H. Thomas
fig. b James H. Thomas, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201994499
Viola purpurea, photographed by Dan Horowitz
fig. c Dan Horowitz, CC0 1.0 / obs. 199900613
Viola purpurea, photographed by Dan Horowitz
fig. d Dan Horowitz, CC0 1.0 / obs. 199895640
Viola purpurea, photographed by Trevor Van Loon
fig. e Trevor Van Loon, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194434415
Viola purpurea, photographed by James C. Davis
fig. f James C. Davis, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 192691966
Viola purpurea, photographed by Daniel S.
fig. g Daniel S., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 198000454
Viola purpurea, photographed by Justin Felder
fig. h Justin Felder, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 197356290

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.

Flowering n = 687 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 687 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 25 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 atriplicifolia Greene
  • Viola atriplicifolia var. thorii (A.Nelson) A.Nelson
  • Viola aurea Kellogg
  • Viola aurea subsp. arizonensis M.S.Baker & J.C.Clausen
  • Viola aurea subsp. aurea
  • Viola aurea subsp. mohavensis M.S.Baker & J.C.Clausen
  • Viola aurea var. venosa S.Watson
  • Viola nuttallii var. venosa S.Watson
  • Viola ophiophila Greene
  • Viola praemorsa var. venosa (S.Watson) A.Gray
  • Viola purpurea subsp. atriplicifolia (Greene) M.S.Baker & J.C.Clausen
  • Viola purpurea subsp. aurea (Kellogg) J.C.Clausen
  • Viola purpurea subsp. dimorpha M.S.Baker & J.C.Clausen
  • Viola purpurea subsp. geophyta M.S.Baker & J.C.Clausen
  • Viola purpurea subsp. integrifolia M.S.Baker & J.C.Clausen
  • Viola purpurea subsp. mesophyta M.S.Baker & J.C.Clausen
  • Viola purpurea subsp. mohavensis (M.S.Baker & J.C.Clausen) J.C.Clausen
  • Viola purpurea subsp. purpurea
  • Viola purpurea subsp. venosa (S.Watson) M.S.Baker & J.C.Clausen
  • Viola purpurea var. atriplicifolia (Greene) M.Peck
  • Viola purpurea var. geophyta (M.S.Baker & J.C.Clausen) J.T.Howell
  • Viola purpurea var. purpurea
  • Viola senecta A.Nelson
  • Viola thorii A.Nelson

and 1 more.

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.

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