Tradescantia Hub
If you search online for information about variegated plants, you’ll find plenty of blog posts offering to explain how variegation works and describing two or three different types. I’ve read lots of those posts, both when I was first learning, and more recently when I’ve wanted to explain things to other people. But they’ve never […]
An FAQ about plant growth regulators (PGRs), covering how and why they are used, and what effects they have on plants.
Two Tradescantia zebrina naming mysteries, solved with one neat reclassification.
Growing tropical tradescantia seeds can be difficult and laborious. But if you’re lucky, you could end up making a brand new and beautiful plant.
Thrips are a common problem for Commelianceae houseplants. Learn some tips for spotting the earliest signs, and how to choose a treatment to tackle them.
Tradescantias are semi-succulents, which means they’re much more tolerant of drought than a lot of plants. It also means that they’re a lot less obvious about it when they eventually do get thirsty. Growing tradescantias as houseplants is very different from having “drama queens” like coleus, nerve plants, and polka dot plants.
In the world of cultivated tradescantias, there are some plants which people refer to as “wild type”. This is a pretty ambiguous term that doesn’t do much to help identify plants – the best approach in these cases is to use cultivar names instead.
This article is a plain english rewrite of the ninth edition of the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP), which is the set of rules about how cultivated plants are named. Because it’s simplified, some information has been left out. This version is aimed at people who are naming new plants, or who […]
This is a topic that causes a lot of confusion, so I wrote this summary on correct and incorrect names in Commelinaceae!
Plant names can be complicated. It seems like it should be easy enough to refer to a plant and have another person know what you’re talking about. But as soon as you get into plant-related conversations you quickly end up in a tangle of Latin, confusion, and even misinformation.