Pansies or Violas Tricolors (三色菫、蝴蝶花、三色紫羅蘭、人臉花、阿拉葉)

Whenever I go into a public park, I never cease to be amazed by the beauty of a kind of very small but delicate flower They come in all kinds of color combination. I don't know how many times I have photographed them. At the flower show this year, I did the same.Today, I thought I really must find out more about them and get rid that doubt which has been bothering me for such a long time. Here's what I discovered from Wikipedia.

The flower has got a whole host of names: heartsease, heart's ease, heart's delight,
tickle-my-fancy, Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me, come-and-cuddle-me, three
faces in a hood, or love-in-idleness and pansies. In Chinese, it's called 三色堇菜、蝴蝶花、三色紫羅蘭、人臉花、阿拉葉－尼勒－其其格.

The viola tricolor or pansy is a common European wild flower,
growing as an annual or short-lived perennial in grasslands on acid or neutral soil, usually under partial shades and its purple, blue, yellow or white flowers bloom from April to September and are hermaphrodite and self-fertilized, aided by bees and other insects. Since its introduction into North America, it has become widespread, and is known as the
johnny jump up though many of them are now cultivated it has a long history of use in herbal medicine as cures for brochitis, asthma and colds because it helps the victim to whopping coughs and is a diuretic, used for treating rheumatism and cystitis and has also been for making yellow, green and blue-green dyes,
while the leaves can be used to make a chemical indicator. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ophelia's line line often quoted "There's pansies, that's for thoughts". (pansy sounds like pensées" in French, which means "thoughts")

Enough words. What do they look like? Here're some photos which I took at this year's flower show which for one reason of another I didn't have time to deal with.

Here's one white, yellow and purple with one spot on each petal and radiating lines at the centre

One in white, yellow and purple blue but embroidered at the edges

This one has even more strongly colored edges

Perhaps how much purple, white, yellow etc depends on the accidents of genetic variation?

This one is completely purple except for the centre which shows its characteristic darker hues and yellow heart

These are completely different again, yellow and dark purple !

One in light and dark pink and light brown.

Another one in red, dark brown and yellow

This one has little yellow at the outer part of the petals

These are predominantly dark red. But whatever may be their color combination, they all seem to share one trait on common: they never grow alone: they always bloom in great profusion.