Violet Morning

Wood Violet (Viola sylvestris)

For the morning after May Day, a perfect cluster of violets blooming in a shady hollow in Lanark - what perfect colour, what a wealth of green leaves, what delicious fragrance, what exquisite texture. . . . When I find myself dreaming of Spring in the depths of winter, there are usually violets somewhere in the dream, and when I awaken their fragrance lingers for hours.

There is an old saying that "violets are for love". Mythology says that the lame god Vulcan annointed himself with an attar of violets to capture the heart of the goddess Venus and persuade her to marry him. The Empress Josephine embroidered her wedding gown with violets, and favoured them as her personal scent signature. When she died, Napoleon planted violets on her grave, and his last stop on the way to St. Helena was at his wife's last resting place where he picked a handful of violets and placed them in a locket which he wore until his own demise - to this day, candied violets are used to decorate wedding cakes. In the good old days when swooning was considered de rigeur, Victorian ladies kept sachets in their bureaus to scent their their lacy handkerchiefs, and when a social occasion required a dramatic swooning, out came a demure violet scented handkerchief. Today, it is not uncommon for vintners to describe one of their offerings as having "a hint of violet in the bouquet", but wearing violet fragrance on one's person seems to have gone out of vogue, and that is a pity.

Part of the problem is that the scent we associate with violets is not the real thing - extracting the true essence from violets is fabulously expensive, and the perfume we associate with this little jewel of a flower is usually either completely synthetic or suggested to our impressionable noses by using Orris Root when blending the perfume. I have never encountered a mass produced violet fragrance which captures the heady redolence, the natural magic of violets blooming in their native place.

Rather than wearing synthetic violet fragrance, I pass the "stuff" by and binge on violets in Spring instead, my nose hovering a few inches from blooming clumps in the woodland whenever I encounter them. Wild violets contain an ionone which temporarily short circuits our sense of smell, and although the little blooms give off fragrance continuously, my ability to partake of the perfume comes and goes, but I have yet to tire of the activity.