Ruellia caroliniensis(J.F.Gmel.) Steud.

Carolina ruellia

WFO wfo-0001044886 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Ruellia caroliniensis, photographed by Judith Bush
fig. a Judith Bush, CC BY-SA 4.0 / 2022-06-11 / obs. 205127858
Ruellia caroliniensis, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. b Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201793853
Ruellia caroliniensis, photographed by Carol Ann McCormick
fig. c Carol Ann McCormick, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 203559062
Ruellia caroliniensis, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. d Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205694626
Ruellia caroliniensis, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. e Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201805942
Ruellia caroliniensis, photographed by Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS
fig. f Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201065711
Ruellia caroliniensis, photographed by Alex Abair
fig. g Alex Abair, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199096915

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.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 1,667 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 1,667 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 34 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 ciliosus (Pursh) Nees
  • Dipteracanthus ciliosus f. dentatus Nees
  • Dipteracanthus ciliosus var. dentatus Nees
  • Dipteracanthus ciliosus var. hybridus (Pursh) Nees
  • Dipteracanthus drummondii Torr. & A.Gray
  • Dipteracanthus mitchillianus Nees
  • Hygrophila oblongifolia Raf.
  • Hygrophila oblongifolia var. laxior Nees
  • Pattersonia caroliniensis J.F.Gmel.
  • Ruellia caroliniensis f. breviberbis Fernald
  • Ruellia caroliniensis f. candida Fernald
  • Ruellia caroliniensis f. detonsa Fernald
  • Ruellia caroliniensis f. eciliata Fernald
  • Ruellia caroliniensis f. hypopsila Fernald
  • Ruellia caroliniensis f. laevior Fernald
  • Ruellia caroliniensis var. caroliniensis
  • Ruellia caroliniensis var. cheloniformis Fernald
  • Ruellia caroliniensis var. membranacea Fernald
  • Ruellia caroliniensis var. nanella Fernald
  • Ruellia caroliniensis var. salicina Fernald
  • Ruellia caroliniensis var. semicalva Fernald
  • Ruellia caroliniensis var. serrulata Tharp & F.A.Barkley
  • Ruellia caroliniensis var. typica Fernald
  • Ruellia ciliosa Pursh

and 10 more.

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.