It has also been introduced to parts of central and southeastern Europe and much of eastern North America, where it has spread to become a noxious weed.

Recent research has also revealed that the Asiatic dayflower can bioaccumulate a number of metals, making it a candidate for revegetating and essentially cleaning spoiled copper mines.

[4] The leaf sheaths are cylindrical, sometimes striped with red, and typically glabrous, but usually have margins that are puberulent or pilose, meaning lined with fine, soft hairs.

The uncurved spathes typically have a cordate, or heart-shaped, whitish base, which contrasts with its dark green veins.

[2][4] The 2 upper petals are composed of a claw about 3 mm (0.12 in) long and a broadly ovate limb with an acute apex and a cuneate-cordate base.

The fertile stamens are dimorphic: the lateral pair have maroon to indigo anthers that measure about 2 mm (0.079 in) long and are elliptic with a base that is sagittate or arrowhead-shaped.

The central fertile stamen has a yellow, elliptic anther with a maroon connective and a base that is hastate or spearhead-shaped, but with the lobes at right angles.

Linnaeus picked the name in honour of the Dutch botanists Jan and Caspar Commelijn, using the two large showy petals of Commelina communis to symbolise them.

[5] A number of names given to plants thought to be different species have fallen into synonymy with the Asiatic dayflower.

[7] Finally, Korean populations of the species were named under the synonym Commelina coreana in 1910 by Augustin Abel Hector Léveillé.

Clarke after demoting it from the full species status in which it was placed by Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel in 1861.

[5] Jisaburo Ohwi's Flora of Japan also treats the variety as geographically distinct, stating that it is restricted to mountainous areas.

In Russia the Asiatic dayflower is found naturally on Sakhalin as well as in the Far East in areas surrounding the Ussuri River.

[5] Within its native distribution, the plant is most typical of moist, open places, including shady forest edges and wet areas of crop fields, orchards, ditches, and roadsides.

[12] Within its native range in China it is also sometimes considered a pest, especially in the northeast of the country where it has caused economically significant agricultural damage in orchards.

One important experiment tested the hypotheses that floral guides (i.e. various patterns and colours on anthers and petals) simultaneously promote pollinator visitation and prevent visits where the pollinator fails to come into contact with the stigma or anthers, termed pollen theft.

When the central, bright yellow fertile anther was removed, leaving only two brown fertile anthers, the frequency of legitimate flower landings decreased, meaning that the visitors were not pollinating the flowers, suggesting that floral signals also prevent "theft", or visits where the pollinators take pollen, but do not place any on the stigma.

Five of the species examined, including the Asiatic dayflower, also showed high concentrations of other metals such as zinc, lead, and cadmium.

The results suggest that the Asiatic dayflower is a good candidate for copper mine spoil revegetation and phytoremediation.

Two of the fungi, Kordyana commelinae and Phyllosticta commelinicola, are thought to be host specific with the Asiatic dayflower.

The remaining three insects include one species of moth, Pergesa acteus, and two true bugs, namely Aphis commilinae and Aeschrocoris ceylonicus.

[13] Important pollinators include the Asian honeybee, Apis cerana, syrphid fly, Episyrphus balteatus, and the bumble bee species Bombus diversus.

ludens, is grown for its larger petals which yield a blue juice used in manufacturing a paper called boshigami or aigami (藍紙),[3] which is the famous product of the Yamada village in the Shiga prefecture.

[3] The dye, also referred to as aigami, but also as aobanagami (青花紙) or tsuyukusairo (露草色),[3] is composed primarily of malonyl awobanin and was used extensively as a colorant in 18th and 19th century woodblock prints in Japan, especially during the early Ukiyo-e era.

As a result, the color was eventually replaced by imported Prussian blue, a much more stable colour with its first commercial appearance in 1829 in the work of Keisai Eisen.

Its widespread use in stomatal studies is due to the fact that the leaves produce exceptional epidermal peels that are consistently one cell layer thick.

This same quality makes the plant popular for use in laboratory exercises in higher education for demonstrating stomatal function and morphology.

Guard cell turgor pressure and its regulation in the opening and closing of stomata is particularly easy to demonstrate with the Asiatic dayflower.