Spiderwort

 Its genus name, Tradescantia, is after King Charles's the First gardener, John Tradescant, who planted Spiderwort from the New World in the King's garden. Its common name is not so easy to track down the meaning..... some say it is the hairiness of the sepals and buds that look like the spiders silk and others say that it is the sap from the leaves .... if you break the tip of a leaf and wait for a droplet of sap, you can touch it and then stretch it so that it also resembles the silk of a spider. Spiderwort lives for only a day. It opens at dawn and closes by mid-afternoon. A very interesting tidbit about this flower (though I don't completely understand it.... you may) is that the hairs around the stamen are one of the few tissues that is known to serve as an effective way of detecting ambient radiation levels (Wicked). The little hairs are normally blue in color but I think that I understand that they turn pink with higher ambient radiation levels. Such a big job for such a little flower.

Where I found it : in the corner of a parking lot