Commelina is a tender perennial that’s primarily grown as an annual. I grew Commelina ‘Sleeping Beauty’ for the first time last summer.
You can’t miss the flowers. They are stunning:
Unfortunately they only last a day, and the plants themselves are not all that attractive. The flowers appear on fragile, knobby stems, and because of their shelf-life those stems are usually full of dried-up little flowers from the previous day.
On the plus side, the plants are easy to sprout from seed and the tiny, vivid-blue flowers keep appearing all summer long into fall.
‘Sleeping Beauty’ grows 18 to 24 inches tall and is happy in full sun or part-shade. The plants are not fussy about soil conditions. I’m not all that excited to grow this plant again, but where else can you find such brilliant-blue flowers on such an easy-to-grow plant?
I’ve probably not planted my last commelina.