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Field Pansy

©Philip Precey

Field pansy

With its familiar features, the Field pansy is a delicate version of a garden favourite. Usually creamy-yellow in colour, it can be seen in fields and on roadside verges and waste ground.

Scientific name

Viola arvensis

When to see

April to October

Species information

Statistics

Height: up to 15cm
Common.

About

The delicate Field pansy is a wild relative of our garden pansy and can be found in fields and on waste ground and roadside verges - anywhere the ground has been disturbed. Its long-stalked, pale yellow flowers can be found winding their way through the grasses from April to October.
Field pansies are annuals, so they live for one growing season, flowering, seeding and dying off. Only the dormant seeds survive, ready for the next season.

How to identify

The low-growing Field pansy has pale creamy-yellow flowers that have an orange flush on the lower petal. However, it does display a variety of colour forms towards violet, sometimes making it difficult to tell apart from the Wild pansy, with which it also hybridises.

Distribution

Grows throughout the UK, but is less common in eastern parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Did you know?

The face-like arrangement of the petals of pansies has provided them with many names from 'Cat's Face' to 'Three-faces-under-a-hood'.