FROM BLUE TO PURPLE FLOWERS 



Virginia, or Common Day-flower 



{Commelina l^irginica) Spiderwort family 



Flowers — Blue, i in. broad or less, irregular, grouped at end of 

 stem, and upheld by long leaf-like bracts. Calyx of 3 unequal 

 sepals ; 3 petals, i inconspicuous, 2 showy, rounded. Perfect 

 stamens 3 ; the anther of 1 incurved stamen largest ; 3 insig- 

 nificant and sterile stamens ; i pistil. Stem .• Fleshy, smooth, 

 branched, mucilaginous. Leaves : Lance-shaped, 3 to 5 in. 

 long, sheathing the stem at base ; upper leaves in a spathe- 

 like bract folding like a hood about flowers. Fruit : A 3- 

 celled capsule, i seed in each cell. 



Preferred Habitat — Moist, shady ground. 



Floivering Season — ^J une — September. 



Distribution — "Southern New York to Illinois and Michigan, 

 Nebraska, Texas, and through tropical America to Para- 

 guay." — Britton and Browne. 



Delightful Linnaeus, who dearly loved his little joke, himself 

 confesses to have named the day-flowers after three brothers 

 Commelyn, Dutch botanists, because two of them — commemo- 

 rated in the two showy blue petals of the blossom — published 

 their works ; the third, lacking application and ambition, 

 amounted to nothing, like the inconspicuous whitish third petal ! 

 Happily Kaspar Commelyn died in 1731, before the joke was per- 

 petrated in " Species Plantarum." 



In the morning we find the day-flower open and alert-looking, 

 owing to the sharp, erect bracts that give it support ; after noon, 

 or as soon as it has been fertilized by the female bees, that are its 

 chief benefactors while collecting its abundant pollen, the lovely 

 petals roll up, never to open again, and quickly wilt into a wet, 

 shapeless mass, which, if we touch it, leaves a sticky blue fluid 

 on our finger-tips. 



The Slender Day-flower (C erecta), the next of kin, a more 

 fragile-looking, smaller-flowered, and narrower-leaved species, 

 blooms from August to October, from Pennsylvania southward 

 to tropical America and westward to Texas. 



