Viola nephrophylla

Leconte violet

Family: Violaceae · Type: perennial · Native

Leconte violet is a California native perennial found in the Klamath Ranges, northern High Cascades, northern Sierra Nevada, southern California mountains, and Great Basin in shady, moist areas including lake margins and yellow-pine forests at elevations of 335 to 2,302 meters. Flowering from January to September, this plant produces deep blue-violet to white flowers with distinctive white and dark violet-veined lower petals, often featuring bearded lateral petals. Growing from thick, fleshy rhizomes with no visible stem, it reaches up to 50 centimeters tall with ascending to erect basal leaves. Its leaves are broadly ovate to kidney-shaped, 1 to 7 centimeters wide, with crenate or serrate edges and a heart-shaped base, carried on petioles 5 to 25 centimeters long. The fruit is an ellipsoid capsule 5 to 12 millimeters long, containing beige to bronze-mottled seeds.

Habitat: Shady areas in moist or swampy ground, lake margins, yellow-pine forest

Bloom period: Jan-Sep

Elevation: 335-2302 m

Bioregions: KR, CaRH, n SNH, SCo, SnGb, SnBr, GB

California counties: San Diego, Mariposa, Placer, Los Angeles, Mono, Riverside, San Bernardino, Inyo, Alpine, Plumas, Humboldt, Shasta, Lassen, Siskiyou, Tuolumne, Santa Clara

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.