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Weird traits. Growing in dry riverside sand/gravel bank. All petals completely glabrous within except for small patch of very short hairs far at the back of spurred petal. Plant otherwise pretty much glabrous throughout.

(To update: cleistogamous capsules from these plants were grown out to collect seed. Following Ballard's new treatment, the seed and capsule traits indicate Viola communis, which the rest of the observed traits are also consistent with. V. communis is not recognized in iNat's current framework. Hopefully this will come in line with Ballard in the future- it's turning out that a lot of the material in this area is V. communis, and the presumed synonymy under sororia is awkward)

Good strange one, trait-wise. Population of a couple dozen, growing one out to gather seeds from cleistogamus capsule. Description from the one I took as a specimen:

"What initially caught my attention was that while the plant seemed glabrous overall the lateral petal hairs were only slightly if at all expanded and seemed longer than expected for V. cucullata. I'll attach some photos along with this information.

Lateral petals are bearded with hairs of varying length, many reaching or slightly exceeding 1mm, shorter hairs sometimes club-tipped as in V. cucullata but longer hairs mostly cylindrical with tapered tips or weakly expanded tips. The spurred petal features stout but very sparse hairs, which transition to a dense coat of shorter hairs within the spur. The upper petals sparsely feature short, often clubbed hairs.

Sepals have sparsely ciliate margins (cilia very short and sharp where present), but are lanceolate to broad-lanceolate. Tips appear acute to blunted, though the latter turn out to be pointed tips that are incurved. Sepal auricles are short, 1-1.5mm, not well differentiated from the bases of the sepals which have an inflated, crinkled appearance that extends into the auricles.

Peduncles and petioles are entirely glabrous. Leaf blade undersides are glabrous and paler, slightly longer than wide, ovate to deltate with rounded tips, slightly fleshy. The upper surfaces are variable- a couple leaves are totally glabrous, one features very short hairs (slightly concentrated on the veins) over more or less the whole blade, and the rest have just a small quantity of similar hairs near the base/on the basal margin of the blade.

Stipules are lanceolate with irregular sharp, short cilia that give a sparsely toothed appearance.

Rhizomes are thick and knotted and more or less ascending. An early cleistogamus flower was present on a short but strongly ascending peduncle, but was of course still undeveloped inside. Sepal margins on the apparent cleistogamus flower were more consistently ciliate than the chasmogonous flowers.

asci 8-spored; ascospores 1-septate (mostly), averaging 10.6 x 3.6 um (of 4); lichenicolous on Placynthiella dasaea? thallus front shown in photo 3 where it is parasitizing a granular crust. Growing over bryophytes on limestone.

Leaves succubously inserted with entire margins. Antheridial bracts on adaxial surface of stem adjacent to leaf attachment. Wide-opening parianths with entire to bluntly toothed margins. It is growing in dense mats on a rotting log on a stream bank.

I assume this is F. asagrayana due to size but the FNA key says the styli should have “appendages or teeth” for that species. I did my best to capture pictures of the styli but I’m not sure. F. selwyniana also has ocelli (seen in photo #3) but the stylus does not have teeth.