Violet Ruellia

About the Violet Ruellia

A tough native petunia-look-alike that shrugs off heat and drought, opening fresh lavender trumpets morning after morning from spring to frost. Each flower lasts a single day, twisting shut by afternoon - and the plant simply makes more, for months on end, on almost no water.

Violet ruellia is no relation to the true petunia despite the resemblance; it is an acanthus, kin to shrimp plant and flame acanthus, and a far better citizen of a Texas garden than the invasive Mexican petunia sold in nurseries. It seeds itself into untended corners, open woods, and prairie edges across the southern half of the state.

The leaves earn their keep as much as the blooms: ruellias are host plants for the common buckeye butterfly, whose spiky black caterpillars strip a patch without harming its roots, and for the malachite in South Texas. Small bees and skippers work the trumpets daily.

The seed capsules finish the show - they dry, tense, and burst at a touch or a rain, flinging seed several feet with an audible snap. A patch in September crackles quietly in the heat.