Early Blue Violet

Viola adunca

Hosts 2 caterpillarsSpecialist hostPollinator plant

Growing it

When	Flowers May to June
Type	groundcover
Sun	Full sun, partial shade
Water	Low, medium
Soil	pH 5.5–7
Hardiness	zone 2–7
Mature height	0.1 m
Mature spread	0.225 m
Spacing	0.15 m
Years to maturity	1
Bloom	May–Jun
Flower colour	Blue checked against its common name
In bloom	May June
Native to	AB, SK

Where it has been recorded

BothSpecimensObservations

448 squares of about 28 km, each holding at least one record. A square is not a claim that the plant grows throughout it, and an unshaded square is unrecorded rather than empty. Darker squares hold more records, which follows roads and towns as much as it follows the plant. 260 herbarium specimens and 1,527 field observations this project may redraw. A filled dot is a pressed sheet somebody can re-examine; a hollow ring is a photograph identified by community agreement. Where the dots are dense is where people have looked, not where the plant is commonest, and empty ground is unsurveyed rather than unoccupied. How this map is made.

Which ecoregions the records fall in

Aspen Parkland central AB / SK: 959 records, high confidence
Northern Continental Divide south AB: 531 records, high confidence
Moist Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 279 records, high confidence
Western Alberta Upland central AB: 228 records, high confidence
Fescue Grassland south AB: 226 records, high confidence
Eastern Continental Ranges central AB: 224 records, high confidence
Boreal Transition central AB / SK: 169 records, high confidence
Cypress Upland south AB / SK: 138 records, high confidence
Mid-Boreal Uplands central AB / SK: 113 records, high confidence
Peace Lowland north AB: 112 records, high confidence
Mixed Grassland south AB / SK: 57 records, high confidence
Slave River Lowland north AB: 14 records, medium confidence
Wabasca Lowland north AB: 8 records, medium confidence
Western Boreal central AB: 7 records, low confidence
Churchill River Upland north SK: 3 records, low confidence

These are counts of records collected somewhere in the region, which is the resolution of the evidence: the map above shows where inside it. A region with 3 records is not the same claim as one with three hundred, so the count travels with the region. A region missing from this list means nobody has recorded it there, which is not the same as the plant being absent. Records within 900 m of a border count for neither side, because the border is not drawn finely enough to say which one they are on. Source: GBIF occurrence search + PRESERVED_SPECIMEN pass, retrieved 2026-08-24. Boundaries digitised from the National Ecological Framework for Canada v2.2 (Ecological Stratification Working Group 1995), simplified to about 900 m for display: an outline is accurate to roughly a kilometre, not to the metre. How these counts are made.

See every observation, live and current, on GBIF or iNaturalist.

Documented animals

8 documented relationships, 2 with a specialist that has no alternative.

pollen for

Brown-tailed Bumble Bee Guzman et al. 2022
Large Bee Fly Guzman et al. 2022
Syrphus opinator Guzman et al. 2022
Yellow-fronted Bumble Bee Guzman et al. 2022

nectar for

Brown-tailed Bumble Bee Specimen records from www.bumblebeewatch.org
Erynnis icelus Specimen records from iNaturalist.org

caterpillar host for

Aphrodite Fritillary ★Acorn & Sheldon 2006
Mormon Fritillary ★Acorn & Sheldon 2006

Also worth knowing

Safety

Toxicity not assessed, absence of a warning is not a guarantee of safety

Edible parts

Leaves, flowers

Buying it

About $8–$16 per plant (estimate), usually from a native-plant nursery. Estimate (groundcover default); AB retail as of 2026

Where these numbers came from

Flower detail: not verified, a genus-level estimate