18 Tradescantia Virginica.
nine to twelve or fifteen inches long, tapering to a gradual acumina-
tion, same colour on either surface, somewhat succulent, amplexi-
caule, and sheathing at base, channelled, striated, and undulated,
often edged with red. Peduncles umbellate, pubescent, numerous,
drooping when in bud, but during and after florescence, erect. Ca-
lix covered with a dense, whitish pubescence. Flower consisting
of three, ovate, wrinkled petals, of a very delicate succulent texture,
and imperial-purple colour, with a green or white, flat, broad stripe
in the centre of the petals. They are evanescent, one flower only
continuing twenty-four hours; the petals become dissolved into a
kind of jelly during the night of the day on which they expand, and
arc wrinkled up almost to nothing. They occasionally vary from
imperial-purple to Berlin-blue, in the shade. Near the umbel there
is one bract-like leaf, much shorter than the other. Stamens six,
filaments imperial-purple, finely and delicately fringed with cilise of
the same hue. Anthers horizontal, oblong, convex or flat, saffron-
yellow. Pistil purple. Stigma and germ straw-yellow. Grows on
the sandy banks of tide rivers, the margins of creeks, and similar
situations throughout the Union. Flowers in May and June.
It delights in moisture and loose sandy soil.
This plant is readily increased by parting its long, fibrous' roots, and
setting them out in suitable situations in the autumn, as well as by sowing
the seeds. In this manner the plant is cultivated and increased in
Europe, where for nearly a century it has been known and admired.
Tradescantia Virginica. 19
In England it blooms throughout the summer, each set of expanded
flowers as they perish being followed by a succession of new ones,
as ephemeral as themselves.
This very elegant and singular plant is well known to many persons,
being often cultivated in gardens. It is greatly admired for
the singular brilliance and beauty of the flowers, to the rich purple
of which the brilliant golden-coloured anthers form a striking and
agreeable contrast. It is not generally known by those who cultivate
it, to be a native plant; and I have known it purchased at a high price
from gardeners, near this city, while the shores of the Delaware a few
miles below its suburbs are bordered with it. The juice expressed
from the petals, or taken after florescence while they are in the
state of a dissolved pulpy mass, makes a brilliant stain or pigment,
exhibiting the peculiar brilliancy of the imperial-purple.
The genus received its name from Ruppius and Linnseus in honou r of
the two John Tradescants, father and son. The former was the father
of natural history in England, and enjoyed the merit of having been
the first person who collected natural curiosities together in the form
of a Museum. The son visited Virginia, and before 1729 carried
into England, some new plants, among which was the one here
figured, the type of the genus.
Mr. R. Brown has separated this, with some other plants, from