This is a mess of a species. Ruellia tubiflora. It never should have happened, but it did. And so I am stuck with a giant taxonomic + nomenclatural mess left by Emery Leonard. James and I have a running joke that we should just synonymize all lichens into Lichen lichen. Maybe I should do the same to whatever variant of Ruellia tubiflora this ends up being?

Relax, I am rarely serious.

Ok, in all seriousness, this plant, no matter how much it vexes me, is probably a new species. It is from the Orellana region, just west along a shitty dirt road used by oild field operators, on the road from Coca to Dayuma. Do I have the time and stamina to deal with it? Maybe or maybe not. Do I have the drive to prioritize publishing it over several other new species in the genus awaiting description…species that are much less unruly, and way more behaved? Unlikely.

The phylogeny snippet included here is a little RADseq data teaser. As you can see, this species (E. Tripp et al. 6776, which is sp54tubiflora in this phylogeny) is most closely related to sp55 (Heringer 10483, housed at the US National Herbarium) along with spnov2_Colombia, which is the thing that looks just like it that we collected in Colombia two years earlier (see the following Ruellia Page: Ruellia vel. aff. tubiflora, Tripp et al. 5228). So, there you have it. Yeah, that’s where I’m at, too.

Wild collected, Ecuador, E. Tripp #6776 w/ Manuel Luján & Matt Schreiber (COLO); Photos by Erin Tripp

An incredible plant!! There is nothing understated about Ruellia proxima – from its enormous leaves to its large, showy white flowers. This shrubby Ruellia was first collected from Bolivia along the Rio Juntos near Cochabamba in 1892. We found this population in a wet, deeply shaded side drainage off the Rio Beni we accessed by small boat. Definitely worth all the effort! In addition to the Amazonian areas of Bolivia and Brazil, populations are also known from lowland forests of Peru.

Wild collected, Bolivia, Erin Tripp #6001 w/ Manuel Luján, and Dina Clark (COLO); Photo by Manuel Luján; Blog post by Dina Clark

First described from Brazil in 1909, but also known from dry forests of S.E. Bolivia and Paraguay, this lovely species has only been collected a few times since and is either rare or overlooked.

The long white corolla and elongate floral tube, together measuring roughly 100 mm makes this species stand out. On closer inspection, it is interesting to see the tube is actually twisted which is a trait only observed in a few species within the genus!

In Bolivia, this species is reported to only bloom for a two week period in September (2016) so we were lucky then to have found it in full flower. It is also said to be night-flowering and moth pollinated yet we saw it blooming during daylight hours in several locations.

Wild collected, Bolivia, Tripp et al. #6017 (COLO); Photos by Manuel Luján; Blog post by Dina Clark

A common species of a large chunk of South America. Widespread. Emblematic of the pedunculate species in the “Physiruellia” clade. In the one of the photos, note the woody capsule (fruit) with modified funiculi (hooks) that aid in seed dispersal when the fruit explodes, as all Acanths in the proper sense do.

Update(Sep 2016): First described from Rio de Janeiro in 1831, this species occurs in a variety of both tropical and subtropical sites. We saw this species many times as we traveled through the seasonally dry forests of the Beni region of Bolivia. Incredibly, this species most likely is one of the parents of another Ruellia we observed in the same location (Tripp 5971), the result of hybridization with Ruellia puri.

Wild collected, Bolivia, Tripp #5970, 5976, 6009 w/ Luján and Clark; Photos by Manuel Luján; Blog post by Dina Clark

Blog post coming soon!

We encountered this species in Bolivia at roadside in secondary, disturbed habitat bordering cultivated fields in an area that was very arid and hot. Dead cayman nearby added to the ambiance.

Suffrutescent herb to 1 m, extremely abundant, corollas mostly purple but some plants producing flowers nearly white in color; plants formerly ascribed to Ruellia coerulea have be synonymized with Ruellia simplex, but this is the wild type and it is SO very different from Ruellia simplex.

Wild collected, Bolivia, Tripp #6020 w/ Luján, and Clark (COLO); Photos by Manuel Luján; Blog post by Dina Clark

For starters, I will refer you to Ruellia “La Tranca” Numero Uno, aka Ruellia sp. nov., Tripp et al. 5971 & 5977. Why? Because Tripp et al. 5979 represents Ruellia sp. nov. 2, La Tranca Dos.

We thank you, Bolivia, for your most appropriately placed roadblocks on Earth.

This species was collected on a day that we were not planning on spending in the greater Caranavi area, but La Tranca kept us local for the next 8 hrs. We decided to head up a dirt track (a very dusty, dirt track) towards the small community of Bolinda. Along the way, we encountered this species, carpeting the steep, nearly vertical slope that comprised the roadside. I had guessed at the time that it must have been related to R. menthoides, or R. terminale. One massive RAD sequencing dataset later, I was partially correct…perhaps. This species, labeled as ‘sp48_Caranavi’ in the photograph of the clade shown here, is strongly resolved within the clade that contains R. menthoides and R. terminale, but it’s position therein is not yet well-understood (note the mere 27% bootstrap support…Felsenstein, you would be not be happy).

Some time has passed, and I am convinced this species is new to science. And that it is somehow, someway, ultimately related to R. menthoides, R. terminale, and a pile of other stuff, as you will appreciated.

Wild collected, Bolivia, E. Tripp #5979 w/ Manuel Luján & Dina Clark (COLO); Photos by Erin Tripp

Stymied by Ruellia taxonomy? Be confused no more! In this case, all thanks should be directed to Cecilia Ezcurra, an Argentian botanist I have never had the fortune of meeting. There are two people on this planet that more or less made my entire dissertation possible through their prior labor on Ruellia taxonomy: Cecilia is one, and Tom Daniel (California Academy of Sciences) is the other. I owe both so much gratitude so here it is – thanks to you both!

In 1989, Cecilia published a paper entitled “Ruellia sanguinea (Acanthaceae) y especies relacionadas en Argentina, Uruguay y sur de Brasil”. In this most welcomed manuscript, she clarified morphological differences within an otherwise tricky lineage of species with exclusively red flowers that have centers of distribution in Bolivia, Argentina, and surrounding areas. These species ’clade up’ in all molecular analyses to date, which is somewhat unusual among red-flowered, bird-adapted species of Ruellia (generally, the closest phylogenetic neighborhood of any given red-flowered species involves species with purple, yellow, or white flowers, but here seems to be a whole lineage of: red red red)Ruellia sanguinea grows in moist forests at mid elevations (1700 m or so), ranging from northern Argentina to Bolivia. Look for it by it’s blood red flowers. Below, I have modified and added to Cecilia’s original key from 1989. My thanks also go to Dieter Wasshausen (retired, Smithsonian), who worked very long and hard to produce the Acanthaceae treatment of Bolivia, as well as my colleague Alexander Schmidt Lebuhn (CSIRO), for helping make sense of this entire complex, which really needs a formal name.

Working key to Clade Red Red Red, which includes:

1. angustiflora: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay
2. brevifolia: everywhere
3. gracilis: Bolivia
4. longipedunculata: Bolivia & Argentina
5. pearcei: Bolivia, Peru
6. ruiziana: Bolivia, Peru
7. sanguinea: Bolivia & Argentina
8. saccata: Bolivia, saccate corollas

1. Corollas distinctly pink……………………………………………………………………………………. Ruellia ruiziana
2. Corollas distinctly red…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….2
3. Flowers solitary, sessile or not, on very short peduncles, in axils of reduced apical leaves …………………….…………………………………………………………………………………………….….. Ruellia sanguinea
4. Flowers in cymose, multiflowered inflorescences…………………………………………………………….…..3
5. Leave linear……………………………………………………………………………..………………………Ruellia gracilis
6. Leaves otherwise………………………….………………………………………………………………………………………..4
7. Leaves always dark purple underneath……………………………………………………………..Ruellia pearcei
8. Leaves not dark purple underneath……………………………………………………………………………………….5
9. Corolla saccate……………………………………………………………………………………………….. Ruellia saccata
10. Corolla otherwise…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..6
11. Calyx lobes < 10 mm long, linear….………………………………………………………………..Ruellia brevifolia
12. Calyx lobes > 10 mm long, lanceolate to oblong….…………………………………………………………………7
13. Stems markedly 4-sided, inflorescences generally equal to or shorter than the axillary leaves……………………………………………………………………………………………………………Ruellia angustiflora
14. Stems weakly 4-sided, inflorescences far exceeding the length of the axillary leaves…. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..Ruellia longipedunculata

Wild collected, Bolivia, E. Tripp #6021 w/ Manuel Luján & Dina Clark (COLO); Photos by Erin Tripp

We encountered this species in Bolivia (Sep 2016) in the foothills of the Andes where it was locally abundant in the understory of secondary forests. It is also known from central Brazil and areas of Ecuador and Peru. Distinguishing character is the strongly sigmoid – curved lower portion of the corolla. Flower color ranges from lavender to pink. In places, it grew symmetrically with Ruellia brevifolia, resulting in a possible hybrid between the two (Tripp 5971).

Wild collected, Bolivia, Erin Tripp #5975, 5984, 6002 w/ Manuel Luján, and Dina Clark (COLO); Photos by Manuel Luján; Blog post by Dina Clark