ASIATIC DAYFLOWER

Commelina communis

Multi purpose plant for food, medicine, dyes, and more

This shy, persistent beauty is one of my favorites.  Every day a new flower opens, and the color is what I call 'heavenly blue'.  It's the flower of my childhood when we played on the old Croton acqueduct behind the house in Yonkers, New York. The Asiatic dayflower is considered a weed both in areas where it was introduced and in certain parts of its native range. The flowers' interactions with pollinators have been well studied and have helped to support important hypotheses about pollination in the field of plant ecology. Recent research has also revealed that the Asiatic dayflower can bioaccumulate a number of metals, making it a candidate for revegetating and essentially cleaning spoiled copper mines. Several animals and fungi use the plant as a food source, with a few species feeding upon it exclusively.

LINKS
http://www.eattheweeds.com/commelina-diffusa-what-a-day-for-a-day-flower-2/ 

• 5.1 Medicine and food
• 5.2 Pigment and dye

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commelina_communis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croton_Aqueduct

NOTE
My computer died Friday and went to hospital Saturday
(https://www.rossmanngroup.com/) 

After an attempt to replace the core, and that only uncovering worse problems, the verdict was it is essentially not fixable BUT through the miracle of coincidence a replacement Mac laptop was found and offered as a kindness. So I'm back on line, and the screen is larger which is a bonus. I lost the ability to download photographs. It's still there I just don't know how to access it. E-mailed a friend who set me up originally and who will visit Today or Tuesday. Meanwhile, this new/old one is the same operating system (expires 2011 warranty just like my old one but good for many years he thinks) and all my data was transferred. I'm set for the time being to continue rowing this boat down our mutual blog stream.

~*~

Special thanks to dear Jude hill who made it possible.