TRADESCANTIA VIRGINICA 



SPIDERWORT. 



NATURAL ORDER, COMMELYNACEJE. 



Tradescantia Virginica, L. — Leaves lance-linear, elongated, tapering from the sheathing 

 base to the point, ciliate, more or less open; umbels terminal, sessile, clustered, many- 

 flowered, usually involucrate by two leaves; plant either smooth or hairy, with flowers 

 of blue, purple, or white. (Gray's Manual of the Botany of the Northern United States. 

 See also Wood's Class-Booh of Botany, and Chapman's Flora of the Southern United States.) 



HE " Spiderwort " was one of the first of our native 

 flowers to find a home in England, having been carried 

 to that country from Virginia by the younger Tradescant, 

 according to Parkinson, before 1629. Prof. Gray maintains 

 that the genus is dedicated to the elder Tradescant, who was 

 gardener to King Charles I, but other writers say it was 

 intended to commemorate in the name the services of the 

 younger as well. Before Tournefort and Linnaeus had made 

 botany simple by reducing the Latin names given to each plant 

 to two, the generic and the specific, or in other words, the noun 

 and its adjective, Latin names of a much greater length had 

 been applied to many plants, and our plant on its introduction 

 to England was accordingly called Phalangiuri EpJiemerum 

 Virginianum Johauuis Tradcscanti. The contrast between the 

 old and the new name will show how much we have gained by 

 the innovation of Linnaeus, although there are still some persons 

 who think botanical names hard to learn. It is from the name 

 Phalangium, however, that our plant has been called "Spider- 

 wort," and not " because the juice of the plant is viscid and spins 

 into thread," as suggested by Prof. Wood. Pliny speaks of 

 Phalaugiiim as a venomous spider, the bite of which was said 



