SWEET VIOLET – A FLOWER OF LOVE AND GRIEF

Sweet violet (Viola odorata) turned up in my garden this February. I didn’t plant it. It arrived on its own, weeks ahead of schedule, three small purple faces tucked under their own heart-shaped leaves in the patch of earth between my back door and the clinic. It stopped me in my tracks. And it sent me down a path I want to take you along – because this plant has a history that goes back thousands of years, a place in grief work that I think is underappreciated, and it makes some of the loveliest simple recipes you can have in your kitchen.

The stories

Violet folklore goes deep, and what strikes me every time I read it is how the same duality keeps showing up. Love and death. Joy and mourning. This is a flower that has always belonged to both. The Greek myth of Io is probably the oldest. Zeus fell in love with Io, the daughter of a river god. When his wife Hera got suspicious – and Hera always got suspicious – Zeus panicked and turned Io into a white cow. Which, as plans go, was not great. But he felt terrible about it, so he grew a whole field of sweet violets for her to graze on. Soft, fragrant, purple flowers for a woman who could no longer speak or hold anything in her hands. The Greek word for violet – ion – carries Io’s name inside it.

Aphrodite claimed violets too. They said the flowers sprang up wherever the goddess of love walked, and her attendants wove her crown from them. There’s a sixteenth-century poem that goes: “Violet is for faithfulnesse, which in me shall abide; hoping likewise that from your heart you will not let it slide.” So from very early on, violet was tied to loyalty in love – the kind that endures.

But the Romans took violets to funerals. They blanketed the graves of children with them until you couldn’t see the earth beneath. On the day they honoured their dead, it was violets they carried. This tiny, easily missed flower that nods its head and hides among its own leaves. There’s something about that choice that gets me every time. When it came to the deepest grief, they didn’t reach for something showy, but something humble and delicate.

In Christian tradition, violets became associated with the Virgin Mary’s humility. One story says they were white until Mary watched Christ on the cross, and turned purple to echo her mourning. Whether or not you take that literally, it tells you something about what people saw in this flower. Modesty and sorrow, a willingness to be close to suffering without making a fuss about it.

Shakespeare knew all of this. In Hamlet, Ophelia – lost in grief after her father’s death – says she would have brought violets, but they all withered when he died. At her funeral, her grave is covered with them. And in a Midsummer Night’s Dream, a preparation of violet (called love-in-idleness) is squeezed into Titania’s eyes to make her fall in love with the first thing she sees – which turns out to be Bottom, wearing a donkey’s head. So Shakespeare used violet for both grief and desire, which feels about right.

And then there’s Napoleon’s story…

Napoleon and Josephine married on the 9th of March, 1796. She wore a gown embroidered with violets and told him she wanted to see them always on their anniversary. And he did it. Every single year, wherever he was – at war, in another country, in the middle of a campaign – he had fresh violets sent to her. Every year.

When he was exiled to Elba in 1814, he told his closest supporters he would return when the violets were in bloom. They started calling him Caporal Violet – Corporal Violet. It became a code. If you wanted to know whether someone was loyal to Napoleon, you asked them: Do you like violets? If they just said yes or no, they weren’t part of it. But if they answered Eh bien – well then – you knew they were one of yours. He did come back, briefly, in the spring of 1815. Women appeared on the streets of Paris selling violet nosegays for his supporters to wear. But it didn’t last. After Waterloo he was exiled again, this time to St Helena.

Before he left France for the last time, he visited Josephine’s grave. She had died the year before. He picked violets from her garden. When Napoleon died in 1821, they found a locket around his neck. Inside were those violets – pressed and kept against his skin for six years.

I don’t know what to do with that story except sit with it for a moment. It kind of breaks your heart.

Queen Victoria loved violets too. She grew nearly three thousand plants at Windsor Castle and wrote about them constantly in her diaries – the scent in the cold January air, the way they appeared when nothing else was flowering. In Victorian England violets were everywhere. They were a Mothering Sunday gift, brought to mothers on the first Sunday of Lent. They decorated love tokens and jewellery. The streets of London were full of violet sellers. A posy of violets, in the language of flowers, meant faithfulness. And the industry was enormous. In Grasse, in the south of France, hundreds of tonnes of flowers were being distilled for perfume. In 1900 alone, 200 tonnes of violet flowers and 100 tonnes of leaves were processed. Violet scent went into perfume, soap, confectionery, medicine.

It faded after the German chemists Tiemann and Kruger figured out how to synthesise ionone in the 1890s. Once you could make the scent in a lab, you didn’t need the fields of flowers. Disease hit the Parma violets. The old cultivars disappeared. The flower sellers moved on. By the middle of the twentieth century, the commercial violet industry had more or less gone.

But the plant itself didn’t go anywhere. It’s still here, growing low at the edges of hedgerows and woods and gardens, flowering before the bees are even properly awake. Mine turned up on their own.

How I use sweet violet in clinic

Violet is one of those herbs that doesn’t get taken as seriously as it should. Herbalists will happily talk at length about other gentle spring herbs – chickweed, dandelion, cleavers – but violet often gets overlooked as though it’s too small or too mild to really do anything. I think that’s a mistake.

In herbal energetics, violet is cooling and moistening. Think of someone who’s dried out – whether from grief, from stress, from illness, from just holding on too tight for too long. Tissues that have become hot and inflamed, or tight and congested. That’s where violet works.

Its main actions are demulcent, lymphatic, nervine relaxant, expectorant and anti-inflammatory. In practice what that looks like is this: violet soothes irritated tissue, particularly in the throat and lungs. It supports lymphatic flow and helps shift congestion – swollen glands, that boggy feeling, things that aren’t moving the way they should. It calms the nervous system without knocking you out. And it gently loosens and moves mucus, which makes it useful for dry, tight coughs.

It’s gentle enough for children. Violet syrup given for coughs and sore throats is one of the oldest remedies in family herbalism, and it still works.

It’s also worth remembering that violet is a food. The leaves and flowers are edible – toss them into salads, soups, pestos, or just eat them straight off the plant. They’re surprisingly nutritious – rich in vitamin C, calcium and magnesium too. For anyone who finds nettles a bit too drying for their constitution, violets make a lovely alternative spring tonic.

But the thing I keep coming back to is what violet does emotionally.

Sweet violet and grief

I use rose a lot for the heart. I love it. It softens the chest, lifts the mood, gently balances hormones, invites you back into feeling. For many people, that’s exactly what’s needed. But for some people – and this is something I’ve learned over many years of supporting people in my private practice – rose can be too much. Rose opens you up. And if someone has been holding themselves together very tightly, getting through the days, functioning, coping, that opening can feel exposing.

Violet works differently. It doesn’t push you toward feeling and it doesn’t try to open anything. It sits with you where you are and eases the tension around whatever you’re holding. The tight chest. The jaw that won’t unclench. The shallow breathing. The feeling of everything being locked. Violet moistens what has gone dry and brittle. It moves what’s stuck. But it does it while holding you in balance.

The old herbals say violet “comforteth the heart and other inward parts.” Comforteth. Not fixes or stimulates. That word says everything about how this plant works.

In practice, I’ll often start someone on violet when grief has settled into their body as physical tension and dryness. Where the tears won’t come. Where everything feels shut down. I might use it as a simple tea, or a syrup, or in a tincture blend alongside linden or lemon balm or chamomile. It never overwhelms a formula. It supports everything around it.

Making violet remedies at home

If you have access to sweet violets – in your garden, or growing along hedgerows and woodland edges – here are some simple ways to work with them. Use both the leaves and flowers. Pick on a dry day if you can, mid-morning once any dew has lifted.

Violet tea

This is the simplest way to take violet. Put a small handful of fresh leaves and flowers – or a heaped teaspoon of dried herb – in a cup. Pour over just-boiled water and cover it. This matters – you’ll lose the volatile oils in the steam if you leave it open. Steep for 10 to 15 minutes. Strain and drink. Add honey if you like. You can drink three cups a day for respiratory support, lymphatic congestion, or when you just need something calming and gentle.

Violet syrup

This is the old recipe, the one my grandmother made. The one that’s been used for children’s coughs for centuries.

Pick a good handful of violet flowers. Put them in a jar and pour over just enough just-boiled water to cover them. Lid on. Leave overnight, or at least eight hours. The water will turn a deep blue-purple. Strain through muslin, pressing gently to get all the liquid out. Measure the liquid, then add an equal weight of sugar or honey. Warm gently in a pan, stirring until dissolved – don’t boil it. Pour into a clean bottle. If you squeeze in some lemon juice, the syrup turns from blue to pink. It’s beautiful, and it tells you the chemistry is working – the colour change comes from the anthocyanins in the flowers reacting to the acid. Take it by the teaspoon for sore throats and coughs, or stir into warm water as a drink. It keeps for a few weeks in the fridge.

Violet tincture

If you want to keep violet on hand for longer. Pack a jar loosely with fresh violet leaves and flowers. Cover with vodka or brandy – around 40% alcohol. Seal it, label it, leave it for four to six weeks. Give it a shake when you remember. Strain and bottle. The dose is around 2ml – roughly 40 drops – three times a day, though with gentle herbs like this the exact amount matters less than taking it regularly.

Violet oil

This is the one people don’t think of, and it’s one of my favourites. Violet oil is cooling, soothing and anti-inflammatory, and it’s particularly good for dry or irritated skin – eczema, cracked heels, rashes, anywhere that’s hot and uncomfortable.

Gently wilt your fresh violet leaves and flowers for a few hours first to reduce the water content – violets are high in moisture and can spoil an oil if you skip this step. Then pack them loosely into a jar and cover with a good carrier oil – olive or sweet almond both work well. You want to let the moisture escape, so rather than sealing the jar, cover it with muslin or a cloth and leave it somewhere warm for a day or two. A low oven, a yogurt maker or a sunny windowsill all work. Strain through muslin, check there’s no water sitting at the bottom of the jar, and bottle. You can use the oil as it is, or melt in some beeswax to make a salve. It’s also lovely as a breast massage oil for lymphatic support – there’s a lot of lymphatic tissue in the breast, and gentle massage with violet oil can help keep things moving. You can add a few drops of rose or geranium essential oil if you want to make it into something really beautiful.

A note on safety

Violet is very safe. No known contraindications at normal doses, and gentle enough for children and the elderly. The only thing worth mentioning is that anyone with the rare inherited condition G6PD deficiency should be cautious, as violet contains salicylic acid which can be a problem in that specific situation. And as with any herb, if you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, stick to food-level amounts or check with a qualified herbalist.

If you’d like to learn with me and the plants through the seasons, The Crafty Herbalist Academy will soon reopen. Click here to learn more and sign up to the waiting list.