Viola canadensisL.

Canada Violet

WFO wfo-0000426608 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Viola canadensis, photographed by Shane Johnson
fig. a Shane Johnson, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-02 / obs. 204465775
Viola canadensis, photographed by Marilynn Miller
fig. b Marilynn Miller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203503665
Viola canadensis, photographed by Liren Varghese
fig. c Liren Varghese, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205026724
Viola canadensis, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. d Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202234648
Viola canadensis, photographed by Shalana Gray
fig. e Shalana Gray, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201708451
Viola canadensis, photographed by Shalana Gray
fig. f Shalana Gray, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201715679
Viola canadensis, photographed by Bob
fig. g Bob, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201677242
Viola canadensis, photographed by Lauren Bosch
fig. h Lauren Bosch, CC0 1.0 / obs. 201449407

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 4,184 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 4,184 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 19 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.

  • Lophion canadense Spach
  • Lophion rugulosum (Greene) Lunell
  • Lophion rydbergii (Greene) Nieuwl. & Lunell
  • Viola albiflora Link
  • Viola canadensis subsp. neomexicana (Greene) House
  • Viola canadensis subsp. rydbergii (Greene) House
  • Viola canadensis subsp. scopulorum (A.Gray) House
  • Viola canadensis var. canadensis
  • Viola canadensis var. neomexicana (Greene) House
  • Viola canadensis var. pubens Farw.
  • Viola canadensis var. scariosa Porter
  • Viola discurrens Greene
  • Viola geminiflora Greene
  • Viola muriculata Greene
  • Viola negulosa Greene
  • Viola neomexicana Greene
  • Viola rugulosa Greene
  • Viola rydbergii Greene
  • Viola scopulorum Greene

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.