Tradescantia subasperaKer Gawl.

Wide-leaved SpiderwortZigzag Spiderwortzigzag spiderwort

WFO wfo-0000589790 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY / CC BY-SA

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Tradescantia subaspera, photographed by Dominic
fig. a Dominic, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-12 / obs. 205528565
Tradescantia subaspera, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. b Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203974608
Tradescantia subaspera, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. c Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202234109
Tradescantia subaspera, photographed by sarahalder
fig. d sarahalder, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201460316
Tradescantia subaspera, photographed by Michael J. Papay
fig. e Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199314602
Tradescantia subaspera, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. f Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191160027
Tradescantia subaspera, photographed by Daniel S. Katz
fig. g Daniel S. Katz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 165106424
Tradescantia subaspera, photographed by Brian Finzel
fig. h Brian Finzel, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 174588095

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Native range 18 botanical countries

Regions where Tradescantia subaspera is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia AlabamaArkansasFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaKentuckyLouisianaMississippiMissouriNew YorkNorth CarolinaOhioPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaTennesseeVirginiaWest Virginia
Native distribution of Tradescantia subaspera, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Kentucky KTY
Louisiana LOU
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Ohio OHI
Pennsylvania PEN
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 193 in flower of 208 examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Tradescantia subaspera observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 193 of 208 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 6 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 8 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Tradescantia axillaris f. subaspera (Ker Gawl.) Raf.
  • Tradescantia comata Small
  • Tradescantia montana Shuttlew. ex Small & Vail
  • Tradescantia pilosa Lehm.
  • Tradescantia subaspera subsp. montana (Shuttlew.) R.T.Clausen
  • Tradescantia subaspera var. typica E.S.Anderson & Woodson
  • Tradescantia virginiana var. pilosa (Lehm.) C.B.Clarke
  • Tradescantia virginica var. pilosa (Lehm.) C.B.Clarke

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.