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It is a succulent plant with beautiful boat-like formation of grey-green to viney leaves. It needs a little sun to show it's true beauty. It will have Lav/pink flowers and does well in a small basket.
Family: Commelinaceae
Scientific name: Tradescantia navicularis Ortgies in Regel
In: Gartenflora, 26: t. 901, 1877
Origin: Mexico (but diffused elsewhere in Peru & Bolivia)
Conservation status: Listed in CITES appendix 2.
Common Names include: Window's tears, Day flower, Chain Plant, Striped inch plant.
Synonyms:
Tradescantia navicularis (During the winter rest).
It is a succulent plant with beautiful boat-like formation of grey-green to viney leaves.
It needs a little sun to show it's true beauty. It will have Lav/pink flowers and does well in a small basket.
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Description: Miniature trailing perennial succulent related to wandering jew. Evergreen.
This species is quite variable (depending on clones and growing conditions).
Stems: Creeping tufted or trailing and rooting at nodes. This plant produces two different but intergrading type of stems, bulbil-like short shoots with tight imbricate leaves and stolons with long internode which produce short shoots and inflorescences.
Leaves: Crowded or distant 2-3 cm long, 1-2 cm wide. Slightly to very succulent, distichous, lanceolate to broadly ovate, boat-like, canaliculate, very concave and somewhat falcate bronzy-green above, dark purple striated beneath, usually glabrous except along a line ascending from the axil of each leaf. Margins hair-fringed. Tips acute.
Flowers: Inconspicuous, in terminal inflorescences, closely subtended by the uppermost leaf, lilac to bright magenta. They are polysymmetric and comprised of three sepals, three petals, six stamens in two whorls of three, and three connate carpels. Filaments bearded.
Blooming season: Summer, the flowers open early in the morning and close in the afternoon and last only one day (hence the common name ”day flowers”). The buds opening in succession 3 to 5 days apart.
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