Tradescantia zebrina |
Tradescantia occidentalis |
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inchplant, wandering-jew |
prairie spiderwort, spiderwort |
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Habit | Herbs, decumbent. | Herbs, erect or ascending, rarely rooting at nodes. | ||||
Stems | 5–90 cm; internodes glaucous, glabrous. |
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Leaves | 2-ranked; blade variegated, abaxially reddish purple, adaxially striped green and white, lanceolate-elliptic to ovate-elliptic, 3–9 × 1.5–3 cm (distal leaf blades wider or narrower than sheaths when sheaths opened, flattened), base oblique, cuneate, apex acute to acuminate. |
spirally arranged, sessile; blade linear-lanceolate, 5–50 × 0.2–3 cm (distal leaf blades equal to or narrower than sheaths when sheaths opened, flattened), apex acuminate, glaucous, glabrous. |
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Inflorescences | terminal, consisting of pairs of sessile cymes enclosed in sheaths of spathaceous bracts, pedunculate; spathaceous bracts foliaceous, reduced. |
terminal, often axillary; bracts foliaceous. |
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Flowers | subsessile; sepals basally connate, 4–5 mm; petals pink, clawed, claws basally connate forming tube; stamens epipetalous; filaments bearded. |
distinctly pedicillate; pedicels 0.8–3 cm, glandular-puberulent, rarely glabrous or glabrescent; sepals 4–11 mm, glandular-puberulent, usually with apical tuft of eglandular hairs, occasionally with scattered eglandular hairs among glandular, rarely glabrous or glabrescent; petals distinct, bright blue to rose or magenta, broadly ovate, not clawed, 6–16 mm; stamens free; filaments bearded. |
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Capsules | 3-locular; locules 2-seeded. |
4–7 mm. |
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Seeds | 2–4 mm. |
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Tradescantia zebrina |
Tradescantia occidentalis |
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Phenology | Flowering fall–winter (Sep–Feb). | |||||
Habitat | Hummocks and weedy places | |||||
Distribution |
FL; native; tropical America [Introduced in North America] |
AR; AZ; CO; IA; KS; LA; MN; MT; ND; NE; NM; OK; SD; TX; UT; WI; WY; MB
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Discussion | All of the chromosome counts cited by E. Anderson (1954) for this species are attributable to Tradescantia occidentalis var. occidentalis. Varieties 2 (2 in the flora). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 22. | FNA vol. 22. | ||||
Parent taxa | ||||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||
Synonyms | Zebrina pendula | T. virginiana var. occidentalis | ||||
Name authority | Hort ex Bosse: Vollstandiges Handb. Blumengart. 4: 655. (1849) | (Britton) Smyth: Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science 16: 163. (1899) | ||||
Web links |