Nobody in the world could draw them [violet's flower stalk], they are so mixed up together, and crumpled and hacked about, as if some ill-natured child had snipped them with blunt scissors, and an ill-natured cow chewed them a little afterwards and left them, proved for too tough or too bitter.

Proserpina: Studies of Wayside Flowers (Volume 2), Part VII, Chapter I (p. 17)