#smooth ruellia

[headspace-hotel]

So. I saw your post about plants that so many people don't know exist, and I 100% agree- it's so sad that so many don't even realize their native plants exist. Or animals. The world wasn't made to be concrete and steel.

That said, I might be half decent at recognizing native plants, but I don't know a thing about the more obscure and less well known types. Like, edible fruits people don't eat? What are they called? What do they taste like? What wild and wacky flowers do I not know exist? What about rare plants, or ones that look similar to what we know but are completely different? What about stange animals?

Anyways, if/when you're in the mood to ramble I would love to hear about all the different plants.

Well, native plants will of course be unique to where you live, so I can only speak to my own area...but where I live, there is a little known fruit called a Pawpaw (not to be confused with Papaya, which is a different thing).

I think lots of people know about pawpaw, but despite a great deal of interest in commercializing it, this fruit is never found in stores due to being very fragile and spoiling soon after ripening.

You have to eat the pawpaw right after it falls from the tree and not a minute too late. It has a wonderfully soft, smooth texture and tastes like a mixture of banana and mango. The flesh literally melts in your mouth. I came upon a windfall of perfectly ripe pawpaws in the woods one day last fall, and it was a transcendent experience; I'm still haunted by how delicious they were. God's perfect food.

The thing is, when you go driving around in my area, you will see wild pawpaw trees everywhere there are streams and low-lying areas. You'd have to watch them closely because the possums love pawpaw, but I wonder how many people know to...

Flowers! I'd love to talk about flowers. You see, the plants that end up on lists of native wildflowers for butterfly gardens are a small selection that have been bred and cultivated by nurseries...but there are so many more.

For example, look at the Redwhisker Clammyweed:

Delightful. And I didn't even know it was a thing. 

I'll add some of my own photos now. Here is a flower that popped up on its own in my back yard:

Purple passion flower! Its fruit is also edible.

Here is a native Ruellia I found in the pavement:

Spring Blue-Eyed Mary at a nature preserve

Wingstem:

Citronella Horse Balm:

An Ironweed that popped up randomly at the base of a tree in my back yard. Amazing things happen when you strategically identify areas to not mow.

This past summer I kept a big horseshoe-shaped patch of the back yard (where we used to have a garden patch) from being mowed, and by the time it was fall, this goldenrod and Frost Aster came all on its own! Literal clouds of butterflies and bees constantly hovered around it.

We call that spot the Meadow now. My mom complained for most of the summer about the "weeds," until one day I came home from work and she and my sister were in the meadow on a picnic blanket, staring at the butterflies and bees. "There are tiny bees!" my mom said, indicating a Melissodes longhorn bee. "I didn't know there were bees like that!"

A lot of my work these days has to do with introducing experiences with nature to people, because I've seen how it completely changes their perspective. The Meadow is going to be amazing in the spring...

[whatsbloomingnow]

Limestone Wild Petunia (Ruellia strepens)

Acanthaceae (Acanthus Family) Synonym(s): Limestone Ruellia, Smooth Ruellia Base Flower Color: Blue, PurpleReproductive Phenology: May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sept, Oct For more information about this wildflower, Click Here.

[stopandlook]

Scientific Name: Ruellia strepens Common Name(s): Smooth ruellia, limestone ruellia, limestone wild petunia Family: Acanthaceae (acanthus) Life Cycle: Perennial Leaf Retention: Deciduous Habit: Forb USDA L48 Native Status: Native Location: Plano, Texas Season(s): Spring

[cedar-glade]

Ruellia strepens, the Limestone Wild Petunia 

Another classic species found in calcareous glades. This species seems to be notably taller than the other Ruellia spp. for the East-coast/ Midwest, or rather, at least in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana it rules the height scale. It only does well with calcareous environments with open-woodlands caused by thin substrate heterogeneity; this said, it has been found a few times in the more open calcareous barren like prairies. The way we can truly tell this species apart is easily remembered by it’s second common name, The Smooth Petunia.  Unlike the Carolina and Hairy Petunia, this species is smooth stemmed; there is a var. that has node tufts. I caught this one in June just starting to bloom but, depending on the eco-range you can find them blooming as early as May to the end of October.

Also this individual has the same energy as Horse gentian mixed with a fringe gentian. 

[mielikki-austin]

09032021

This week has been mostly free of any dramatic photo opportunities, so it will probably be a lot of cats and plants this week. 1.  Chili pequin - this is a plant that showed up at the base of one of our front yard trees and I was SO STOKED when I saw it because I thought I knew what it was, and turns out I was correct!  It's the species 'Capsicum annuum', which makes it the same species as the bell pepper- and the jalapeno, and the New Mexico chile, and the cayenne pepper- evidently these are all different cultivars of the same plant.  Anyway, this is one that grows wild, and I was so bummed when an arborist mowed down one we had pop up last year.  But then this one showed up so I put bricks around it to make sure it didn't get accidentally mowed, and now it has about five million of these tiny peppers, which can be eight times as hot as a jalapeno.  And what will I do with them?  Probably nothing!  I am a wimp when it comes to spice.  Last year a friend gave me a cayenne pepper plant that did marvelously, and it was frustrating because I had no idea what to do with all the hot peppers.  So why am I so stoked that this plant showed up?  I'm not really sure, other than I think it's just super cool when food grows up out of the ground without me having to do anything.  It's like magic.  And being able to identify it means that I have at least somewhat decent skills as a forager, which will keep me alive during the zombie apocalypse.   Perhaps I will be able to trade my hot peppers for a chicken or a flint and steel or a bolt of gingham or some shit.

2.  Mylo in the window - New guy has settled in well.  He is such a bigger asshole than our older cat Tycho, and Tycho is a pretty big asshole.  Mylo is younger and even aside from that I think he's just more energetic.  He's small and compact and looks like a little cat version of a bandy-legged bulldog.  He tears around the house like his tail is on fire.  He gets in to everything.  He's only just started getting used to our smooth floors; I think he had carpet at his former home because he had a lot of comedic crashes as his momentum caused him to slide unexpectedly.  One of the ways he brakes when he runs into something suddenly is by sitting up on his back legs like a meerkat.  If I can ever get a picture of this, I can die happy. Anyway, here he is, behind a plant.

3.  Two planters - Eric built a second planter, identical to the one you saw a couple of weeks ago.  The first holds all of my purple salvias (sages), and the new one holds my purple ruellias (petunias) which are not blooming much now, but will when they get established from what I know of them.  I had a stick of one of the tall ones in a glass jar in my garden window (the one the cat is in the picture above) and it was covered in purple flowers throughout most of the winter last year.

4.  Passion flower - remember these from the side of the house in Richardson?  We joked that the deeply-lobed leaves looked like pot leaves, and then they got these crazy blooms on them that look like UFOs.  I remember that and have always wanted to try growing them, so we got a plastic arbor for them to grow up, and I ordered a little plant from an online nursery.  It's been growing slowly all summer, but it finally bloomed.  The flowers are as weird-looking as I remembered.  And apparently they make fruits that are at least somewhat edible!  I'll let you know if that's the case.

5.  New snake! - So, in researching all of these plants for the yard, I've gotten a yen to try to make an enclosure for my tiny Florida kingsnake JJ that has living plants in it.  This will take a big aquarium, and a lot of times people have them and decide they're sick of dealing with having fish and get rid of them, the same way people do with boats or motorcycles.  I was hoping to find a 75 gallon one, but instead I found another snake.  This was the kind of snake I had hoped to get when I bought JJ, but these have gotten very popular, and are thus harder to find and a lot more expensive.  But the lady who owned this one was moving in to take care of her grandmother who did not want a snake in the house, so she was unloading it for cheap, and I could not resist.  She said he was pretty nippy, which kingsnakes are known for- not because they're mean, but because they love to eat and assume everything is food.  This is a good thing, because while snakes are pretty easy pets to keep, the main thing that goes wrong is that they stop eating- and you don't know if it's because they're sleepy, or still full from their last meal, or don't like what you're feeding them, or they're sick.  It's very frustrating.  But that never happens with these guys!  And I'm not sure if she was just really timid with him, or if he just senses my inner peace but he hasn't tried to bite at me so far. His name is Reggie, short for Regulus.

Stay cool!  Football is starting soon!

[artscult-com]

Downy False Foxglove, Smooth Ruellia - dasystoma flava, ruellia strepens - high resolution image from old book.