Mmmmm......just noted that I have only done two blog posts so far this year. Sorry folks......I guess I am slowing down with age. I will try and keep the occasional one going.....good for my little gray cells and hopefully helpful or entertaining for you.
Ruellia has really only just showed up on this island in the last few decades. This purple flowered plant seems popular as a colorful, quick growing plant to grow by food trucks. This tells me it is an "easy to grow for free" plant that will grow quickly from cuttings. I have yet to see it being sold in nurseries. I got some cuttings a few years ago to plant in my garden so that I could get to know the plant.
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| A patch of Ruellia used in street landscape, Chinatown, Singapore |
Ruellia is native to Mexico and Central America. Already it is on my tough plant list. Back home it likes to grow along moist lake edges etc. In that situation it can really spread easily and become invasive so I do not recommend growing it in any wetland situation here. On the other hand, because it is so tough, it will also grow in dryer conditions and can make a nice addition to your garden if grown in the right place and you monitor its spread.
Ruellia grows about 2-3 ft tall with dark green lance shaped leaves and with sprays of purple flowers. These flowers only last one day....blooming at dawn and dropping off by mid afternoon. I have a few flowering plants like this in my garden. I joke that if I were to hold a garden party, it needs to be in the morning. The long stems of the Ruellia are very sturdy so that is makes attractive and long lasting greenery in a large flower arrangement as long as you do not mind having no flowers showing in the evening but new flowers coming out each day.
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| A stem that I have had sitting in this bottle of water for a few days. |
The natural growth habit of the plant is for the long stems to lie down on the ground and new plants to grow up from the nodes. It is very easy to grow new stems from those new young stems. You only need to put one plant into your garden as in several months that one plant will have "walked" and give you a spreading plant of several heads. You will need to decide how far you will let it spread and trim off those walking stems if needed. I have seen it grow into a very compact clump in a restricted space....this can become too compacted over time so that the clump will look better thinned out with your hand pruners. I have seen people even just cut the whole clump down with a hedge trimmer but in most cases this does not look very attractive. This is a good time to cut a bunch for a vase in your home.
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| Easy to snip a few cuttings of this stem. |
It is also a good tough plant to try growing in a large container on your lanai. It does prefer sun but will do fine in semi shade. I see on the internet that there are a few different cultivars of Ruellia sold at nurseries on the mainland. There is a pink variety that I first saw growing in Sri Lanka a couple of years ago. The internet also says it is a self seeder but I have never seen seeds or volunteer babies from it. Has anyone in Hawaii? Maybe the plants we have in Hawaii are from one of the seedless cultivars. The bees do like the flowers.
Aloha
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