Viola pedatifida is a perennial herbaceous

Herbaceous

A herbaceous plant is a plant that has leaves and stems that die down at the end of the growing season to the soil level. They have no persistent woody stem above ground...

 plant in the Violet family (Violaceae

Violaceae

Violaceae are a family of flowering plants consisting of about 800 species in 21 genera. It takes its name from the genus Viola, the violets and pansies.Older classifications such as the Cronquist system placed Violaceae in an order named after it, the Violales...

). It is 4-8in. (10–20 cm) tall with pale purple flowers and deeply divided leaves. Prairie violet is native to North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

.

The specific epithet pedatifida means "pedately-cleft" in botanical Latin

Binomial nomenclature

Binomial nomenclature is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages...

, in reference to the leaves, which look like a bird's foot with the outer toes again parted. Prairie violet was described for science in 1831 by the Scottish botanist George Don

George Don

George Don was a Scottish botanist.George Don was born at Doo Hillock, Forfar, Angus, Scotland on 29 April 1797. His father, also named George Don, was Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 1802 and his mother was Caroline Clementina Stuart. George was the elder brother of David...

(1798–1856)