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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.
 

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.

During the summer active growth phase it forms very elegant and long flowering stems.

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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:  

• Callisia navicularis (Ortgies) D.R.Hunt
  In: KB 38(1):132, 1983

• Callisia gentlei var. elegans
• Tradescantia brachyphylla Greenman 1898

Tradescantia navicularis
 

Cultivation: Grows well in bright indirect light or in half sun, Due to lack of sunlight the plant becomes lanky & unhealthy. The same plant grown in different light condition may look completely different!!! Need coarse succulents soil with good drainage. Water regularly during the growing season keep rather dry in winter.
Propagation: Stem cuttings, division, small plants form at the nodes.
 

All the information and photos in cactus art files are now available also in the new the Encyclopaedia of Succulents. We hope you find this new site informative and useful.