{"id":3168,"date":"2020-08-31T09:58:01","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T17:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=3168"},"modified":"2020-08-31T09:58:01","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T17:58:01","slug":"mexican-petunia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/mexican-petunia\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexican Petunia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ruellia-2\"<\/a>My daughter loves a new plant\u2014especially a tropical plant.\u00a0 Because of her I grow rambunctious cannas, lovely plumbago, ornamental ginger and tropical hibiscus.\u00a0 Now we have added a new member to the domestic plant family\u2014Mexican petunia, known variously as Ruellia brittoniana, Ruellia simplex, Ruellia tweediana and Ruellia spectabilis.\u00a0 That is a lot of Latin names for one plant.\u00a0 It has even more common names, including desert petunia, Mexican blue bells, and Florida bluebells.<\/p>\n

If truth in advertising applied to plants, ruellia would be done for.\u00a0 It is neither a bluebell nor a petunia.\u00a0 In fact, ruellia is a member of the large acanthus or Acanthaceae family, which contains about 250 genera, including the tall, bear\u2019s breeches that many of us raise in our home gardens.\u00a0 The \u201cpetunia\u201d comes from the appearance of the flowers, which are fused at the bases and flare out into five-petaled trumpets, just like members of the popular petunia clan.<\/p>\n

Despite the \u201cpetunia\u201d misnomer, Mexican petunia and its ruellia relatives are truly native to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, South America and the southern United States.\u00a0 They are evergreen in regions with warm and mostly warm winters, USDA plant hardiness zones 8B through 11.\u00a0 Some sources venture that Ruellia simplex might even be hardy in USDA plant hardiness zone 7, though it would probably need a protected location, lots of mulch and lots of luck.\u00a0 I live in Zone 7 and intend to grow my plant as an indoor specimen during the late fall and winter.<\/p>\n

Mexican petunia was first described in Cuba in 1870 and christened \u201cRuellia simplex\u201d.\u00a0 Many sources use that name now.\u00a0 Others prefer \u201cRuellia brittoniana\u201d, which honors Nathaniel Lord Britton, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century botanist who founded the New York Botanical Garden.\u00a0 The species form is the ancestor of the plants we buy now.\u00a0 The various cultivated varieties on the market have been bred from the species, with an emphasis on better color, increased hardiness and good reproductive manners. \u00a0Species ruellia and some varieties tend to spread to the point of invasiveness in warm weather areas like Florida.\u00a0 Many of their modern descendants are either sterile or much less prolific.<\/p>\n

Our new Mexican petunia is a dwarf variety called \u2018Katie\u2019s Blue\u2019, and its vivid blue-purple flowers remind me of small traditional petunias with a bit more substance in the petals.\u00a0 The difference between a \u201creal\u201d petunia and a Mexican petunia is also apparent in the leaves.\u00a0 Petunia leaves are soft and rounded, almost sticky to the touch.\u00a0 Medium to dark green Mexican petunia leaves are long and lance-shaped, making the dwarf varieties effective as ground covers and container subjects.<\/p>\n

\u2018Katie\u2019s Blue\u2019 is one of the \u201cKatie\u201d series of dwarf plants that also includes \u2018White Katie\u2019 and \u2018Katie\u2019s Pink\u2019, which features pink-purple trumpet blooms.\u00a0 The \u2018Southern Star\u2019 series is another group of dwarf plants in similar colors, as is the \u2018Mayan\u2019 series, developed at the University of Florida.\u00a0 Little \u2018Strawberries and Cream\u2019, discovered in 1994, also features variegated foliage that is speckled with white and blushes pink in the sun.\u00a0 Non-dwarf varieties grow one to three feet tall.\u00a0 Dwarf types top out at less than one foot.<\/p>\n

Among the available standard size varieties is \u2018Chi Chi\u2019, which grows 24 inches tall and bears pink flowers. \u2018Purple Showers\u2019 rises between 36 to 48 inches, as does another purple-flowered variety, \u2018Machu Morado\u2019.\u00a0 Neither self-seeds, but spreads by underground rhizomes in warm weather areas.<\/p>\n

The color range of ruellia is limited to white, pink, blue-purple and purple, but those colors generally blend with a wide range of more assertive garden hues.<\/p>\n

In the last few years Mexican petunia has become more available from nurseries and garden centers on the East Coast.\u00a0 The plants have long been commonplace elsewhere.\u00a0 If you can\u2019t find one locally, try Almost Eden Nursery, 1240 Smith Rd, Merryville LA 70653; (337) 375-2114; www.almostedenplants.com.<\/p>\n

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My daughter loves a new plant\u2014especially a tropical plant.\u00a0 Because of her I grow rambunctious cannas, lovely plumbago, ornamental ginger and tropical hibiscus.\u00a0 Now we have added a new member to the domestic plant family\u2014Mexican petunia, known variously as Ruellia brittoniana, Ruellia simplex, Ruellia tweediana and Ruellia spectabilis.\u00a0 That is a lot of Latin names … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[2369,2368,492,2370,2367,706,2366,2365],"class_list":["post-3168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-desert-petunia","tag-florida-bluebell","tag-houseplants","tag-mexican-blue-bells","tag-mexican-petunia","tag-purple-flowers","tag-ruellia-brittoniana","tag-ruellia-simplex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3170,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3168\/revisions\/3170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}