Common Dayflower (Commelina communis)
- Family: Dayflower (Commelinaceae)
- Flowering: May-October.
- Field Marks: This is the only annual dayflower with fibrous root that has 2 blue petals and 1 smaller white petal.
- Habitat: Wet soil in old fields, thickets, and bottomland woods.
- Habit: Erect or creeping, smooth, branched, to 1 1/2 feet long.
- Stems: Leafless, except for 1 or 2 reduced leaves near the cluster of flowers at the tip of the stem.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, lanceolate to lance-ovate, pointed at the tip, more or less rounded at the base, without teeth, smooth, to 5 inches long and to 1 inch broad, with a conspicuous sheath.
- Flowers: Few in a boat-shaped spathe, the spathe about 1 inch long, with free edges, the flowers symmetrical and blooming only for a single morning.
- Sepals: 3, but 2 of them partly united, green or bluish, unequal in size (1 of them concealed in the drawing by the spathe).
- Petals: 3, free from each other, 2 of them blue, 1/2-1/3 inch long, the third one white and much smaller (smaller petal not drawn so that pistil may be seen).
- Stamens: 6, 3 of them not fertile and bright yellow.
- Pistils: 1; style 1; ovary superior.
- Fruits: Capsule smooth, 1/3 inch long, with 4 dark brown, roughened seeds about 1/6 inch long.
- Notes: This native of Asia has now spread into disturbed wetland habitats.
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