Giant Spiderwort

About the Giant Spiderwort

Giant Spiderwort is one of Central Texas's spring showpieces -- knee-high clumps topped with clusters of three-petaled blooms in saturated blue-violet, sometimes shading to purple or rose pink. It is the largest of the Texas spiderworts and mostly a Central Texas special, thick along roadsides and field edges in the same weeks the bluebonnets peak.

Each individual flower is a one-day performance: it opens in the morning, and by afternoon heat it folds and literally deliquesces -- the petals melt into a watery blob, which earned spiderworts the old folk name "widow's tears." The clump keeps producing new buds for weeks, so the show goes on even though every bloom is a daily rental.

Bees are devoted to the golden anthers at the flower's center, and a spiderwort patch on a spring morning hums like a service station -- worth checking for pollinator photos while you are down at flower level anyway.

This one was photographed on April 7, 2025 in the Austin area, part of a spring morning that mixed wildflowers with the swallow colonies. The morning rule applies to the photography too: shoot spiderwort before lunch or there is nothing left to shoot.