Definition of "violet"

Refreshed by their cooling bath of evening dew, the violets and other nocturnal flowers emitted a pleasant fragrance over the fields, but from the bogs and the rivulets came up now and then damp, penetrating gusts, that sent an icy chill through me.

1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 160

‘Tom,’ he said, ‘you are looking at a crushed violet, a spent egg, a squeezed tube.’

1991, Stephen Fry, The Liar, London: Heinemann, page 19