Also known as Bog Violet, it is a low growing plant with creeping underground rhizome. It has blunt, kidney-shaped leaves and a small pale violet blue flower with darker veins and with a blunt pale lilac spur.

Records from this species should be confirmed by a County Recorder for botany.  It is on the VC55 Rare Plant Register, and therefore a specimen should not be taken.  Take detailed field photos and submit to NatureSpot as soon as possible; and if you think you have found it in a new location, inform the County Recorder as soon you can. (RPR)

Bogs and marshy places also in wet woodland.

April to July.

Perennial

It has a split distribution, being widespread in the northern half of Britain and in Wales, but uncommon in the east of England and in some parts of central Britain.

Scare and decreasing in Leicestershire and Rutland. In the Flora of Leicestershire (Primavesi & Evans, 1988) it was present in 9 tetrads out of 617, but not recorded in the Flora of Rutland (Messenger, 1971)

It is on the current VC55 Rare Plant Register (Hall and Woodward, 2022) as Locally Scarce, recent records mainly from Charnwood Forest.