Ruellia humilis (hairy ruellia)

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Ruellia humilis, photographed by saltyhiker — fig. a saltyhiker, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-01 / obs. 202676570

Ruellia humilis, photographed by Jay Pruett — fig. b Jay Pruett, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204305866

Ruellia humilis, photographed by Michelle W. （鍾偉瑋） — fig. c Michelle W. （鍾偉瑋）, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164333081

Ruellia humilis, photographed by Matt Evans — fig. e Matt Evans, CC0 1.0 / obs. 187369961

Ruellia humilis, photographed by Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS — fig. f Samuel A Schmid, PhD, PWS, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 196636807

Ruellia humilis, photographed by Yann Kemper — fig. g Yann Kemper, CC0 1.0 / obs. 156769811

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.

Ruellia caroliniensisthis one called it 6x compare

Flowering n = 1,122 observations

251

332

238

122

Flowering observations of Ruellia humilis by month
Month	Observations
Jan	0
Feb	0
Mar	1
Apr	55
May	91
Jun	251
Jul	332
Aug	238
Sep	122
Oct	31
Nov	1
Dec	0

Peak flowering in Jul, from 1,122 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 17 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 var. parviflorus Nees
Gymnacanthus humilis (Nutt.) Oerst.
Ruellia caroliniensis f. alba Steyerm.
Ruellia caroliniensis var. parviflora (Nees) S.F.Blake
Ruellia ciliosa var. humilis (Nutt.) Britton
Ruellia ciliosa var. longiflora A.Gray
Ruellia ciliosa var. parviflora (Nees) Britton
Ruellia humilis f. alba (Steyerm.) Fernald
Ruellia humilis f. grisea Fernald
Ruellia humilis f. humilis
Ruellia humilis var. calvescens Fernald
Ruellia humilis var. depauperata Tharp & F.A.Barkley
Ruellia humilis var. expansa Fernald
Ruellia humilis var. frondosa Fernald
Ruellia humilis var. humilis
Ruellia humilis var. longiflora (A.Gray) Fernald
Ruellia humilis var. typica Fernald

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
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.