What is the difference between Tradescantia pallida and stock?
1. Different plant families
Tradescantia pallida is sometimes also called purple queen, and it is a perennial plant in the Commelinaceae family. But anyone who knows stock knows that it is also called gillyflower and stock violet, so it clearly has quite a few names. It belongs to the genus Matthiola and is a perennial plant. Seen this way, not only are the common names different, but the plant families they belong to are completely different too, which shows that they are entirely different plants.
2. Different leaves
Tradescantia pallida: Its leaves are usually alternate, roughly lanceolate in shape, 6 to 13 cm long and 6 to 10 mm wide. The tip of the leaf looks fairly pointed, and the base is stem-clasping and sheath-forming, with many long white hairs at the mouth of the sheath. The upper half is dark green with green-purple edges, and the lower half is purplish red.
Stock: Its leaves are roughly oblong to oblanceolate or spoon-shaped, with petioles 6 to 14 cm long and 1.2 to 2.5 cm wide, and the tip looks bluntly rounded or pointed. The leaves are green. With this comparison, you can see that the difference between their leaves is still very great.
3. Different flowers
Tradescantia pallida: Its flowers are usually densely clustered together, with 3 petals on each flower, generally blue-purple in color and roughly broadly ovate in shape.
Stock: Its flowers are more numerous, and the petals are also relatively large. The color is usually purplish red, light red or white, with many color variations, and the shape is roughly ovate.
4. Different seeds
Tradescantia pallida: Its capsule is oval in shape, with 3 raised ridge lines on it, and inside the capsule there are also many seeds, which are semicircular in shape and brown in color.
Stock: Its seeds are close to round in shape, about 2 mm in diameter, look rather flat, and are dark brown in color, with white membranous wings on the edges of the seeds. So there is a very big difference between the seeds of the two.