Tradescantia, Spiderwort, Virginia Spiderwort, Lady's Tears 'Concord Grape'

An aggressive, high-maintenance perennial grown for its long season of bloom.

Individual flowers last only a day, and whi...Read Morele flowering goes on over a long season, the accumulating black deadheads make the inflorescence look ugly within a week. It isn't practical to deadhead each flower individually---you need to cut the stem to the ground. The plant will respond well to cutting back with more stems and often more flowers.

The habit is leggy and sprawling. Plants need cutting back frequently.

This is a tough weedy plant that can spread aggressively by self-sowing. Resistant to glyphosate, and very difficult to dig out completely, as plants can regenerate from small bits of root.

To keep it looking acceptable, this plant requires more work than it's worth, in my opinion. This plant has been heavily promoted far beyond its garden value. It looks like the pictures only briefly, and looks a mess for most of the season. There are too many better garden plants to bother with this one.

Most cultivars are Tradescantia x andersonia, a group of complex hybrids developed from T. virginiana, T. ohioensis, and T. subaspera.

Bought this 11 years ago as a 3-1/2 inch pot, now I have shared this many times over by dividing the plants and still have a section of g...Read Morearden that is 4 feet by 15 feet that it totally fills! If you dont' want it to spread, mulch heavily! It drops seed and will take over if you dont' watch it. I personally love the color and the fact that I can easily chop this plant off after flowering only to have it sprout back up and bloom again each season.