To every lover of “green things growing,” the African violet offers a challenge. Saintpaulias will grow well and bloom almost endlessly under the conditions of the average home, but it will not flourish so quickly as to let us neglect it or lose interest in it.
At its best, the Saintpaulia is a great delight and particularly dear to all of us who need flowering plants at the window to call a house a home.

A little over a century ago, this “violet” was discovered in “the hilly regions of Eastern tropical Africa.” For decades it has been the darling of the window-garden enthusiast and the profitable joy of the commercial grower.
On greenhouse benches and the kitchen window sill, the African violet blooms with equal grace, increasing its original popularity of 1893 when, for the first time, it flowered in Europe, thousands of miles from its native haunts.
From the day of its discovery, the Saintpaulia (African Violet) took the horticultural world by storm.
A critical garden magazine of the time noted, besides the drawing we have reproduced: “It does not often happen that a plant newly introduced into Europe can claim the honor accorded to the subject of this plate, of being within two years of its flowering figured in five first-class horticultural periodicals.”
Magazine Feature Stories
And today, in America, it is the same. Leading magazines within a few months of each other run feature stories and illustrations in color, placing the African violet’s lovely purple and green beauty on their covers.
However, there was no test of popularity until the autumn of 1946. Then the H. G. Hastings Company sponsored the first African Violet Show in Atlanta, Georgia. The next thousands of visiting “violet” fans required the attention of the police to keep traffic in hand.
But this was not the only time the police had to deal with African violet furor.
A correspondent wrote of what happened in one little Pennsylvania town: “It seems someone had grown an african violet there that was a dirty white, and some man – possibly a grower – propagated and advertised it around as a yellow. Now he wishes he had not.
The people of Manheim have been nearly crazy answering questions from collectors, in the state and out, who have traveled miles to see the wonder and to buy a plant or even just a leaf of it.
Finally, Manheim had to refer the situation to the local magistrate. He posted notices around the town – -There Are NO Yellow Violets Here.”
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