Commelina erectaL.

whitemouth dayflower

WFO wfo-0000358795 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Commelina erecta, photographed by Ryan Watson
fig. a Ryan Watson, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-13 / obs. 205742451
Commelina erecta, photographed by Dominic
fig. b Dominic, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205525647
Commelina erecta, photographed by Chet Burrier
fig. c Chet Burrier, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197527331
Commelina erecta, photographed by Florencia Grattarola
fig. d Florencia Grattarola, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197622607
Commelina erecta, photographed by Bonnie Semmling
fig. e Bonnie Semmling, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203554890
Commelina erecta, photographed by Florencia Grattarola
fig. f Florencia Grattarola, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 195783066
Commelina erecta, photographed by Center for Urban Ecology
fig. g Center for Urban Ecology, CC0 1.0 / obs. 197059463
Commelina erecta, photographed by Diego Dos Anjos Souza
fig. h Diego Dos Anjos Souza, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 197609234

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 10,563 observations

Peak flowering in Apr, from 10,563 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 56 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Commelina aethiopica C.B.Clarke
  • Commelina angustifolia Hassk.
  • Commelina angustifolia Michx.
  • Commelina angustifolia Kunth
  • Commelina assurgens Larrañaga
  • Commelina bahiensis Willd. ex Roem. & Schult.
  • Commelina bahiensis Hoffmanns. ex Spreng.
  • Commelina bainesii C.B.Clarke
  • Commelina caripensis Kunth
  • Commelina crispa Wooton
  • Commelina deficiens Hook.
  • Commelina elegans Kunth
  • Commelina elegans var. glabriuscula Seub.
  • Commelina elegans var. hirsuta Standl.
  • Commelina ensifolia F.Muell.
  • Commelina erecta f. alba Magrath
  • Commelina erecta f. albina Fernald
  • Commelina erecta f. cana Standl. & Steyerm.
  • Commelina erecta f. candida Standl. & Steyerm.
  • Commelina erecta f. crispa (Wooton) Fernald
  • Commelina erecta f. erecta
  • Commelina erecta f. hamipila (C.Wright ex Sauv.) Brashier
  • Commelina erecta f. intercursa Fernald
  • Commelina erecta f. villosa (C.B.Clarke ex DC.) Standl. & Steyerm.

and 32 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.