Tradescantia

thumb| Tradescantia is a genus of 85 species of herbaceous perennial wildflowers in the family Commelinaceae, native to the Americas from southern Canada to northern Argentina, including the West Indies. Members of the genus are known by many common names, including inchplant, wandering jew, wandering dude, spiderwort, dayflower and trad. Quotes In the wood grew, not only the flowers I had before seen, and wealth of tall, wild roses, but the splendid blue spiderwort, that ornament of our gardens. S. M. Fuller, Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (1844), ch. 2 In spiderwort (Tradescantia virginica) the hairs are beautifully coloured, moniliform or necklace-like, and afford good objects for studying rotation of the protoplasm. Filaments are usually articulated to the thalamus or torus, and the stamens fall off after fertilization. Alfred Barton Rendle, "Flower", Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 10 (1911), p. 566 The spiderworts are perennial, succulent, somewhat mucilaginous herbs, having linear or lanceolate leaves and showy reddish or blue flowers in umbel-like cymes, subtended by bracts. George Edwin Rines, ed., "Spiderwort", The Encyclopedia Americana (1920) External links Category:Plants