40 ADDISONIA 
in Kent, England, was supposed to have come from America. 
Linnaeus, who assigned the species its scientific name in 1753, sup- 
posed it American. ‘The plant was long unknown in a wild state, 
until it was discovered to be a characteristic plant of China; doubt- 
less native to the Eastern and not the Western Hemisphere. About 
the middle of the past century it was noted as a rare introduction in 
gardens near Philadelphia; it has since spread and become an 
abundant weed in many parts of the eastern United States. It 
prefers moist rich loam, and is known from Massachusetts to the 
Carolinas and westward at least to Missouri. The plant here 
illustrated was collected by the artist, Miss Mary E. Eaton, along 
a roadside near the New York Botanical Garden, in 1913. 
There is something odd, almost grotesque, about the unsymmet- 
rical blue flowers of the common or Asiatic day-flower, especially 
when, as often happens, the first two flowers of each inflorescence, 
placed one precisely above the other, peer at you from a mass of 
luxuriant foliage like alert but most unnatural faces. The flowers 
last but a few hours during the morning of a single day; by noon in 
sunshine the petals have deliquesced into a crumpled watery mass. 
Commelina is a large tropical genus, and may be known by the 
peculiar flowers clustered within spathe-like leaves. At times the 
third petal is blue and but little smaller than the others. Such is 
the case in two species of our southeastern states; C. virginica L., 
a large broad-leaved perennial species of river-banks and shores, 
and C. longicaulis Jacq., a small-flowered widely creeping weed of 
southern and tropical gardens. Commelina erecta I,., and a few 
near allies, with flowers similar to that here illustrated, but fre- 
quently much larger, and to be known by their hairy sheaths and 
cup-like spathes, complete, except for the rare C. caroliniana Walt., 
the number of our native eastern species. These are all southern, 
but C. erecta has been found as far north as New York City. 
The species of Commelina are all easily grown in loam or sand. 
RANCIS W. PENNELL. 
