By Joseph Mooney
This week’s native plant is wild petuniua, Ruellia humilis.
In the world of native plants, simplicity can be its own reward. That’s true for our native wild petunia, also called fringeleaf wild petunia or prairie petunia. It has none of the trappings of the decked out, over-the-top petunias, beautiful as they are, that you see every spring in the nurseries.
In fact, while it’s called wild petunia, Ruellia humilis is in the Acanthus family, most of whose members are tropical. The more well-known and ubiquitous annual garden petunia belongs to the tomato family (Solonaceae).