I went to the AV show here a few months ago. Someone pointed this out to me on a bloom, and told me, if you want to reproduce that bloom exactly, you could plant that stem with the little leaves on it. She was referring to the ones with various colors. She said if you grew one of those from a leaf, you could get anything in the blooms, but if you grew one from one of the blooms with the little leaves on the stems, that is the bloom you would get.

ok wow, I didnt know that, thats interesting.

The two "leaves" in the picture are called bracts. They are normal and are found in some form on all violets. I used to grow Chanticleer and seem to remember it having relatively large bracts, whereas many other plants have very small, thin bracts that easily go unnoticed. Most plants have two per inflorescence (bloom stalk) but some, like Optimara NeverFloris, have 3. What eahamel said about planting the bloom stalk to reproduce plants with that flower is true, but I'll clarify a bit. It is most often used to reproduce chimeras, which will not come true from leaf cuttings. If a plant also has a spontaneous flower mutation it could be used to reproduce that as well. This method is significantly more difficult to master though.

Mark

Amen to that Mark!

thanks for that mark, I love this forum, you get learn something new everyday.