COMMELYNA VIRGINICA. 
COMMON DAY-FLOWER. 
NATURAL ORDER, COMMELYNACEE. 
CoOMMELYNA VirGINICcA, Linnzus.—Stems usually decumbent; leaves lanceolate, acute, or 
acuminate, contracted at base into sheathing membraneous petioles ; peduncles mostly two 
within the bract,—one usually more slender; rather erect, longer and one-flowered, or 
sterile,—the other commonly three-flowered ; odd petal colorless, ovate lanceolate, about as 
long as the lateral sepals. Plant nearly glabrous. Stem about a foot long (three or four 
feet when supported in hedges) terete. Leaves two to four or five inches long, and half 
an inch to an inch wide; sheathing petioles about half an inch long, striate with green 
nerves, pubescent along the margins. Peduncles half an inch to an inch in length, in- 
closed in the recurved conduplicate bract, both before and after flowering. (Darlington’s 
flora Cestrica, under the name of Commelyna angustifolia? See also Gray’s Manual 
wW the Botany of the Northern United States, Chapman’s Flora of the Southern United 
States, and Wood’s Class-Book of Botany.) 
AREEN, an English writer on gardening, in the early part 
of the present century, tells us that “Commelinas have 
bite little beauty, so that, after the seeds come up, two or three of 
each sort is all that are worth retaining ;” but it must be remem- 
bered that in the days when this judgment was given few plants 
except those with large or highly-colored flowers were thought 
beautiful. The more nearly a Rose resembled a cabbage in form 
and size, the more it was esteemed,—and possibly a large red 
Peony would have been considered the acme of perfection. But 
the science of beauty has progressed as well as other sciences, and 
now few of its students would take our plate and study it in the 
light of its teaching and not pronounce it beautiful. Of course it 
is not gay; but in the gracefulness of its lines, the harmony of its 
proportions, the contrasts of its quantities, and the great variety 
of its special features, there are few plants richer in the elements 
of the beautiful. But to see it in its rare perfection, we must 
