Viola cornuta Penny F1 Mickey - Horned pansy

Viola cornuta 'Penny F1 Mickey' is a horned violet with early and particularly abundant flowering. It produces highly contrasting flowers, combining almost black midnight blue and white, around a delicately painted heart of yellow and indigo highlighted with black "whiskers". The plants are compact and branched, with excellent durability in borders, planters, and hanging baskets. This biennial appreciates humus-rich soils and dappled sunlight.

Belonging to the violet family, the horned violet, which grows spontaneously in the Pyrenees, is a low perennial plant that has given rise to numerous hybrids and cultivars. Often crossed with Viola tricolor (wild pansy), their most famous descendants are horticultural pansies. The 'Penny F1 Mickey' variety is a herbaceous, spreading and compact plant 15 cm (6in) tall when in bloom, with dark green, ovate, and crenate evergreen leaves that form a spreading tuft. This plant is covered in flowers from spring to autumn. Its compound flowers with 5 petals resemble those of small pansies, but their petals are arranged differently. The two upper petals are large, erect, almost black and velvety blue, while the other three are inclined downwards, white, maculate at the base with yellow, purple, and blue, with a violet spot. The plant spreads quite rapidly thanks to its rhizomes and also self-seeds very easily in the garden, not always reliably.

Horned violets are intended for flowering low beds, borders, as well as pots and hanging baskets, where they will be associated with other plants with spring and summer flowering. (Forget-me-nots, Dwarf Narcissus, Daisies, Primroses, Botanical Tulips, summer and autumn asters...). The flowers of horned violets are edible, so feel free to decorate your plates with one or two flowers, or even to place a few on your salads to add a touch of colour.

Note: Please be aware that our plug plants are professional products reserved for experienced gardeners: upon receipt, transplant them as soon as possible, in pots, planters, or directly in beds.