27.  Next, if you will gather a real pansy leaf, you will find it—­not heart-shape in the least, but sharp oval or spear-shape, with two deep cloven lateral flakes at its springing from the stalk, which, in ordinary aspect, give the plant the haggled and draggled look I have been vilifying it for.  These, and such as these, “leaflets at the base of other leaves” (Balfour’s Glossary), are called by botanists ‘stipules.’  I have not allowed the word yet, and am doubtful of allowing it, because it entirely confuses the student’s sense of the Latin ‘stipula’ (see above, vol. i., chap. viii., Sec. 27) doubly and trebly important in its connection with ‘stipulor,’ not noticed in that paragraph, but readable in your large Johnson; we shall have more to say of it when we come to ‘straw’ itself.

28.  In the meantime, one may think of these things as stipulations for leaves, not fulfilled, or ‘stumps’ or ‘sumphs’ of leaves!  But I think I can do better for them.  We have already got the idea of crested leaves, (see vol. i., plate); now, on each side of a knight’s crest, from earliest Etruscan times down to those of the Scalas, the fashion of armour held, among the nations who wished to make themselves terrible in aspect, of putting cut plates or ‘bracts’ of metal, like dragons’ wings, on each side of the crest.  I believe the custom never became Norman or English; it is essentially Greek, Etruscan, or Italian,—­the Norman and Dane always wearing a practical cone (see the coins of Canute), and the Frank or English knights the severely plain beavered helmet; the Black Prince’s at Canterbury, and Henry V.’s at Westminster, are kept hitherto by the great fates for us to see.  But the Southern knights constantly wore these lateral dragon’s wings; and if I can find their special name, it may perhaps be substituted with advantage for ‘stipule’; but I have not wit enough by me just now to invent a term.

29.  Whatever we call them, the things themselves are, throughout all the species of violets, developed in the running and weedy varieties, and much subdued in the beautiful ones; and generally the pansies have them, large, with spear-shaped central leaves; and the violets small, with heart-shaped leaves, for more effective decoration of the ground.  I now note the characters of each species in their above given order.

30.  I. VIOLA REGINA.  Queen Violet.  Sweet Violet.  ‘Viola Odorata,’ L., Flora Danica, and Sowerby.  The latter draws it with golden centre and white base of lower petal; the Flora Danica, all purple.  It is sometimes altogether white.  It is seen most perfectly for setting off its colour, in group with primrose,—­and most luxuriantly, so far as I know, in hollows of the Savoy limestones, associated with the pervenche, which embroiders and illumines them all over.  I believe it is the earliest of its race, sometimes called ‘Martia,’ March violet.  In Greece and South Italy even a flower of the winter.