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About Spiderwort Flowering Plants

This week's painting subject is purple spiderwort; however purple spiderwort is not a generally accepted English common name for any plant. Instead, purple spiderwort is a direct translation of the Japanese name for the plant they call murasaki tsuyukusa. Its Latin name is Tradescantia ohiensis. English common names for it are bluejacket and Ohio spiderwort.

Besides the blossoms, note the many buds hanging below the flowers awaiting their turn to open.

Tradescantia is a botanic genus of 85 species of herbaceous perennial wildflowers that were originally native to the Americas from Canada to Northern Argentina and the West Indies. Common names for the genus as a whole are inchplant, wandering Jew, dayflower, trad, and, most commonly, spiderwort. Today, several species are spread around the world.

The Latin name, Tradescantia, comes from the name of England's King Charles I's gardener, John Tradescant the Elder, who was a plant collector. His son, John Tradescant the Younger, went on plant collecting trips to Virginia in the 1630s. One of the plants he brought back was the Virginia spiderwort. It looks very similar to the Ohio spiderwort.

All spiderwort blossoms have three petals and six male stamens except for rare mutations with four petals and eight stamens. The yellow objects are the anthers, the pollen carriers, at the ends of the stamens. The hairy-looking things are parts of the female pistils.

Here is a much closer look at an Ernest's Spiderwort.

The calyxes have three sepals. They can be seen peeking through the gaps between the petals in the photo above. There are some plants from different genera that resemble Tradescantia plants with four petals, but they are not closely related.

Bees, some types of moths, and other insects are common spiderwort pollinators. This blossom is from the Ohio spiderwort.

The name spiderwort comes from two sources. The "wort" part is the Old English word for plant. The spider part comes from the sticky sap, which when dry, resembles spiderweb thread. The sap can sooth insect bites.

Not all spiderwort blossoms are purple or blue. Some other colors are natural depending on the species, but many are hybrids.

The leaves of spiderwort plants vary in width depending on the species. The zig zag spiderwort has sword-like leaves that are as much as 2 inches wide.

One can tell from this photo of the western Spiderwort) that its leaves are much narrower. They are also folded down the middle.

South America's wandering Jew has roughly oval-shaped leaves with pointed tips.

For scale, the wandering Jew's blossoms are only about an inch across. This plant is considered to be a pest in some areas because of its ability to grow in dense patches, crowding out other ground-level plants.

These stems and leaves of Ohio spiderwort are more typical of spiderwort species in general.

Note the leaves sprouting from nodes on the stems.

Spiderworts are similar to last week's painting subject, evening primrose, in that their blossoms open for a day and then die off. The difference is that spiderworts open during the day, while evening primroses open at night.

Spiderwort plants provide a continuing supply of open blossoms for weeks. Depending on the species, the flowering season runs from late spring to late summer. 

Spiderworts are also edible. The petals make fine garnishes or salad ingredients. Stems and leaves can be eaten raw, and leaves can also be cooked. Some spiderworts, like the Ohio spiderwort, produce lots of sweet nectar. Some people have made fermented "spiderwort soda" from the petals.

Spiderwort plants look nice in gardens, too.

Artwork

Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849)

Known worldwide for his ukiyo-e landscapes, Hokusai painted many other types of artwork, too. One of his most common genres was kachō-ga (pictures of birds and flowers). His Rooster, Hen and Chick with Spiderwort (1830-33) looks very similar to the kind of paintings that Itō Jakuchū (1716 – 1800) was known for.

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 1858)

Hiroshige was the other great ukiyo-e landscape painter of the Edo Period, but he, too, produced many ukiyo-e prints with kachō-ga subjects. His Golden Dragonfly and Spiderwort was produced in 1832-33.