So much for love!

I wouldn’t have been flattered to have received the token of love that Zeus bestowed on his mistress Io. In his haste to hide his affair from his wife, Hera, he turned his beloved Io into a heifer. Holy cow — what an unromantic move!

The only upshot of this transformation was that Zeus created violets and placed Io in a field with these sweet and fragrant flowers to eat and enjoy. This likely wouldn’t have consoled the woman turned cow, though blue violets have become a symbol of faithful love.

The creation of violets is the bright side of this story. Violets are the delightful little blue-purple flowers that can be seen flowering in fields, along roadsides and in wet woods. William Cullen Bryant said it better: “violets spring in the soft May shower.”

Accolades have followed these flowers since Zeus bestowed them as a gift, and it is not only ruminants that enjoy a taste. The flowers can be eaten in salads or candied for dessert. The French were known to make violet syrup, scones and even flavored marshmallows.

Beyond taste, they are admired for their health benefits. The leaves and flowers are noted to have more vitamin C, pound for pound, than oranges. Wild food advocate Euell Gibbons called them “nature’s vitamin pill.” Pliny the Elder promised that wearing a garland of violets would cure even the worst hangover headache. Other advertised benefits included curing insomnia and warding off ‘wicked spirits.’

So eat up and don’t concern yourself with picking the last ones. The flowers that you are picking are infertile and don’t produce seeds. Thus, picking them will not affect their ability to reproduce, since these flowers are cleistogamous. Violets have small closed flowers at the base of the plant (in addition to the obvious open flowers) called cleistogenes, which provide reproductive services. They can self-fertilize and also have underground rhizomes that help them to spread.

Violets have many more fans than just the health-conscious. Napoleon and his love Josephine were smitten not only with each other, but with this flower. Josephine wove them into her wedding dress and Napoleon gave her a violet bouquet every year for their anniversary.

He even became known as Corporal Violet after he was exiled to Elba. He promised that he would “return with the violets,” and sure enough he did, in late March, 1815. Napoleon’s followers used the flower for code and were able to identify the loyal by asking them if they liked violets. An answer of “eh bien” (well) would indicate the faithful, while a response of “oui” or “non” would indicate indifference to his cause. Napoleon loved these flowers to the end, and died with a lock of Josephine’s hair and a dried violet in his locket.

Wildlife, too, enjoy violets. Rabbits eat the leaves and stem, while birds, including the mourning dove, northern bobwhite, junco and turkey, eat the seeds. Mice will devour the seeds, too. Certain butterflies, such as the cabbage white, clouded sulfur and great spangled fritillary need violets as a larval host or for their nectar.

Even today, somewhere, a descendent of Io munches on violets. This should not be considered a kind of consolation prize, since violets are a gift to the senses of sight, touch, smell and even taste. Sometimes the sweetest flowers are the ones not picked, but in this flower’s case it doesn’t matter: enjoy them any way you choose — in the wild or in your home, in literature, poetry and folklore, or even in your salad.

Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown.