Tradescantia virginianaL.

Virginia spiderwort

WFO wfo-0000590232 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Tradescantia virginiana, photographed by Hila Taylor
fig. a Hila Taylor, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-15 / obs. 198094758
Tradescantia virginiana, photographed by Tyler Ekholm
fig. b Tyler Ekholm, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203004729
Tradescantia virginiana, photographed by Craig Martin
fig. c Craig Martin, CC0 1.0 / obs. 195776718
Tradescantia virginiana, photographed by John Abrams
fig. d John Abrams, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 192436235
Tradescantia virginiana, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. e Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191150876
Tradescantia virginiana, photographed by Daniel S. Katz
fig. f Daniel S. Katz, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196390952
Tradescantia virginiana, photographed by Cazody
fig. g Cazody, CC0 1.0 / obs. 193207990
Tradescantia virginiana, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. h Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191149491

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 1,242 observations

Peak flowering in May, from 1,242 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 36 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.

  • Ephemerum congestum Moench
  • Knowlesia spicata (Knowles & Westc.) Hassk.
  • Leiandra divaricata (Raf.) Raf.
  • Tradescantia albida Herb.Kunth ex C.B.Clarke
  • Tradescantia axillaris Raf.
  • Tradescantia axillaris var. flexuosa (Raf.) Raf.
  • Tradescantia barbata Raf.
  • Tradescantia brevicaulis Raf.
  • Tradescantia caricifolia Hook.
  • Tradescantia ciliata Hort.Berol. ex Kunth
  • Tradescantia congesta Penny ex W.H.Baxter
  • Tradescantia crinigera Nees
  • Tradescantia cristata Walter
  • Tradescantia divaricata Raf.
  • Tradescantia elata G.Lodd.
  • Tradescantia flexuosa Raf.
  • Tradescantia glabra C.B.Clarke
  • Tradescantia levigata Raf.
  • Tradescantia lyonii Steud.
  • Tradescantia pilosissima Fraser ex Schult.f.
  • Tradescantia pumila Raf.
  • Tradescantia rupestris Raf.
  • Tradescantia speciosa Salisb.
  • Tradescantia spicata Knowles & Westc.

and 12 more.

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.

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