The Asiatic dayflower plant serves as the type species for its large genus. Linnaeus picked the name "Commelina" in honour of the two Dutch botanists of the Commelijn family, using the two large showy petals of "Commelina communis" to symbolise them. Linnaeus described the species in the first edition of his landmark work, "Species Plantarum", in 1753. Long before the plant was studied in Europe, however, it had been used for generations in traditional Chinese medicine. The flowers have also been used in Japan to produce a dye and a pigment that was used in many world-renowned Ukiyo-e woodcuts from the 18th and early 19th centuries. In the modern era the plant has found limited use as a model organism in the field of plant physiology due to its complex pigment chemistry and the ease of viewing its stomata.