Common Name: ruellias, wild petunias
Synonyms: Aphragmia APNI*
Description: Evergreen perennial herbs or shrubs.
Leaves opposite, usually entire, some shallowly toothed.
Flowers showy, solitary or in axillary clusters, cymes or terminal panicles. Calyx deeply 5-lobed. Corolla radially symmetric or almost so, blue to violet, white or red, tubular to funnel-shaped, sometimes pouched, with 5 spreading lobes. Stamens 4, fused at base into 2 pairs.
Fruit a cylindric or ovoid capsule.
Distribution and occurrence: World: c. 105 spp., Americas, Africa, Asia. Australia: c. 4 spp., naturalised.
Several species cultivated in Australia, occasionally naturalised.
Text by P.G. Kodela (May 2017), based on The European Garden Flora Vol. 6 (2000)
Taxon concept: Australian Plant Census (accessed May 2017)
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Leaf blades lanceolate to narrowly elliptic or linear, to 16 cm long, glabrous (though gland-dotted) | Ruellia simplex |
| Leaf blades ovate to narrowly ovate, to 7 cm long, with white-translucent, often pilose hairs | Ruellia squarrosa |
|
