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Ruellia insignis (Socotran Ruellia) - An upright rounded shrub to 6 feet tall by as wide with dark elliptical 1 inch long dark blue-green leaves and summer flowers that appear yellowish in bud but open as 2 inch wide clear blue flowers.
Plant in full to part sun in a well-drained soil and irrigate occasionally to infrequently - this is a drought tolerant plant. Winter hardiness is not well known but thought to be around 25 ° F.
Ruellia insignis comes from the north central area of the island of Socotra in Yemen. The genus is named for the French physician and botanist herbalist Jean Ruell (1474-1537), who served the French king Francis I and wrote De Natura Stirpium, a Renaissance era treatise on botany. In 1753 Carl Linnaeus honored Ruel by giving the name Ruellia to wild petunias in his book Species Plantarum. The specific epithet is from the Latin word 'insigne' meaning "remarkable", "noted", "distinguished" or "extraordinary". It was first described by Isaac Bayley Balfour in 1884, and plants were first received by the Huntington Botanical Garden from a John Lavranos collection in 1967. A later accession, presumably from this same Lavranos collection came to the Huntington in 1992 and has since (in 2023) become a dense rounded 6-foot-tall shrub growing in a dry location in full sun.
Dr. Erin Anne Tripp, a botanist at University of Colorado who studies Acanthaceae, the family that Ruellia is in, posted to her blog (The Trip Report) a bit about the unusual dimorphic cystoliths (rock sacs )this plant has, but other than this and Dr. Tripp's 2007 article "Evolutionary Relationships within the Species-Rich Genus Ruellia (Acanthaceae)" in Systematic Botany confirming this species' relationship within the genus, we find little additional information about this plant and none about its cultural requirements and tolerances. We thank Glen Williams giving us this nice shrub that should fit in well in our dry gardens.
The information displayed on this page about Ruellia insignis is based on our research conducted about this plant from books in our nursery library as well as from information that is provided by reliable online resources. We also have included our own observations made about it as it grew in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers when we had them in our nursery field. We also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.
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