Ruellia strepensL.

smooth ruellia

WFO wfo-0001044236 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Ruellia strepens, photographed by Rebecca Gimenez Husted
fig. a Rebecca Gimenez Husted, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-10 / obs. 204863522
Ruellia strepens, photographed by Jeff Clark
fig. b Jeff Clark, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203343777
Ruellia strepens, photographed by Zakqary Roy
fig. c Zakqary Roy, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202782076
Ruellia strepens, photographed by Meghan Cassidy
fig. d Meghan Cassidy, CC BY-SA 4.0 / obs. 195432793
Ruellia strepens, photographed by Annika Lindqvist
fig. e Annika Lindqvist, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191361734
Ruellia strepens, photographed by Yann Kemper
fig. f Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 162768172
Ruellia strepens, photographed by Sandra Keller
fig. g Sandra Keller, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 157396753

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Flowering n = 572 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 572 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 20 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Dipteracanthus micranthus Engelm. & A.Gray
  • Dipteracanthus oblongatus Nees
  • Dipteracanthus strepens C.Presl
  • Dipteracanthus strepens f. pedunculatus Nees
  • Dipteracanthus strepens var. calycinus Nees
  • Dipteracanthus strepens var. clandestinus Nees
  • Dipteracanthus strepens var. dillenii Nees
  • Dipteracanthus strepens var. strictus (Nees) Nees
  • Dipteracanthus strictus Nees
  • Hygrophila illinoiensis A.Gray
  • Ruellia biflora Balb. ex Nees
  • Ruellia foliosa Schwein. ex Nees
  • Ruellia oblongifolia Nees
  • Ruellia ovata Nees
  • Ruellia strepens f. alba Steyerm.
  • Ruellia strepens f. cleistantha (A.Gray) S.McCoy
  • Ruellia strepens f. strepens
  • Ruellia strepens var. cleistantha A.Gray
  • Ruellia strepens var. micrantha (Engelm. & A.Gray) Britton
  • Ruellia vinciflora DC. ex Nees

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.