They’re admittedly banal, denizens of the half-hearted container gardens that decorate gas stations. Their foliage is dowdy, their stems too short to make a bouquet. They go unnoticed. To plant them is to know warm weather’s over, our northern hemisphere rolling toward the fulcrum of the winter solstice. No matter: riffling in the breeze, they will stick it out. Even after hard morning freezes heave the ground around them, pansies unfurl in the afternoon, day after pitifully short day. Their most familiar colors—purple, gold, and burgundy—seem if not martial, at least heraldic, the colors of crests or flags. In March, when the ground warms up, it’s easy enough to pull off their dead parts, rehabilitate the whole troop until they retire on Memorial Day.
How is it that their name became a slur for effeminate or gay men? Garden variety misogyny pinch hits (again!) for homophobia: while it’s now often largely unremarkable for women to aspire to reach for anything once reserved as male, the reverse is not accepted yet. The category of the feminine still functions to police masculinity. As they survive, tough as iron yet fragrant (if there are enough), pansies exhilarate; they give the lie to stereotypes about homosexuality, women, and, yes, flowers. While violas, their smaller cousins, may seem more fragile than their larger counterparts, they’re actually hardier, persistent re-seeding volunteers. In fact, although the whole botanical family isn’t suited for heat, tiny violas spring up all summer, even in the pots that simmer on a south-facing deck. Known also by the names Johnny-Jump-Up and Heartsease, they are the wild progenitors from which pansies were bred. What’s the difference between wild and weed? Outside narrowly cultivated ideas, they keep turning up. They evoke something free.
