Spotted Wandering Jew

Others have described this well, I have had it for several years. It can take a lot of sun if kept moist, will rebound after wilting. Sho...Read Morert and small in sunny dry areas, getting taller and larger with better moisture and less sun. Weak stems probably can't stay very tall on their own, but can sprawl between other plants or just make a loose groundcover.

A late sprouting, long blooming perennial shade plant in my Zone 6A garden. It's prospered here for at least six years. The blossoms ar...Read Moree Spiderwort look-alikes. I had to consult an expert (a gardener at the Barnes Arboretum) to get a positive identification because it's rare in my circles. The speckled foliage is attractive. Said to be native to mountains in Mexico.

This plant provides excellent late-season color and interest, even in shade gardens. While it can self-seed invasively, it is easily rem...Read Moreoved where unwanted, but it handsomely fills voids with its purple-mottled foliage that contrasts subtly with more typical greens. Undersides of leaves are purple as well, and the purple is more vivid when planted in sunnier locations. Note that it is late to re-emerge in spring, especially where shade prevents the soil from warming. But even if last season's plants don't survive the winter, the self-sown seeds will provide a new show yielding flowers by mid summer. New foliage is a distinctive grayish color when it emerges.

Ordered from Plant Delights Nursery in spring of 2009 because I loved the spotted leaves and was looking for unusual plants for my shade ...Read Moregarden. Did well in morning sun area of my shade garden, but did not survive the winter. We had unusually snowy and cold one. I took a cutting anticipating that it might not be fully hardy in my zone. The cutting rooted well, bloomed, produced seeds, but did not make it through the winter either. I scattered the seeds in a flower pot with no apparent results to the point that I reused the soil and now I have one 3 leaf plant that sprouted in a pot of something else. I am planning on growing it outside again to see if it might survive a milder winter. I will take cuttings and try to collect seeds again in the fall. The seedpods are oval and open up in three sections. In my limited experience it seems that seeds stay attached to a rib in a middle of the section when the pod first splits open, but eventually fall down. Propagation from seeds appeared easy enough as it happened on its own. I only had one seed pod that matured and not sure how many seeds were fertile.