Tradescantia
Found in almost all counties of Virginia, spiderwort is both a native wildflower and a commonly cultivated garden plant. The plants can grow up to about two feet tall. Sometimes you will find them growing singly, but most often they occur in large clumps that look like tall, wild grass. The flowers bloom at the top of the stems and arise a few at a time from round clusters of buds.
The flowers of spiderwort last only one day, typically opening when the sun hits them and then staying open for just a few hours. The next day new flowers open.
The flower consists of three petals, which can be blue, purple, pink or white, but most commonly blue. There are six, bright yellow anthers that stand out against the blue/purple background of petals. The stamens are hairy– often conspicuously so.
Bloom time is May-June: this is a cool-season plant that does well in moist soil and partial shade. Spiderwort plants go semi-dormant during the heat of summer.
Gloria, I have used your site and your glorious photos and descriptions a number of times over the last couple of years as I increase and round-out my knowledge of local (in my case, NoVA) flower-dom. I contact you now as a result if something else I noticed in your photos: the excellent pictures that also include insect visitors. A friend of mine on an app called Pigment took a photo in Germany if a bee in some flowers. She converted it to grayscale and published a beautifully hand-colored version of the picture and published it for the internal Pigment population where it garnered “likes” like crazy and a number of comments on the bee in particular. Well, it brought your photos to mind so I posted a reference for those interested, but I overstepped my bounds to go in and copy out the first flower-with-bug to convert to grayscale and publish for the ten or so individuals who had liked the bee picture. I warned them NOT to publish a colored version outside of Pigment and/but suggested they e-mail you the hand-colored version in case you might like it. // If I have seriously jumped in your chili, please just say so and I’ll delete my whole and entire postings. If you don’t mind that your bugs may spread your fame far and wide among a small group dedicated as adults to going-beyond-Crayons, If you like, I could do a few grayscales better than this one I just knocked out for my Pigment friends to further amuse them. If you like I can get Pigment (part of Pixite) to exchange whatever legalese forms an adequate tether between you and your work ad encroaching domain-iMacs. (This was meant to be short! Oh, well!) Your fan, Rede, in Alexandria 22309
Hi Rede, I’d be interested in seeing what you mean by grayscale renditions of my insect photos. And maybe a colored-in version too. I’m not familiar with Pigment, although I’ve played with altering my photos using filters in Photoshop. ghschoenholtz@gmail.com. Thanks!