Long before I owned the molecular data to support the hypothesis, I strongly suspected that this funky little plant was clearly related to Ruellia inundata and Ruellia paniculata…. it has the flowers of one and the fruits of the other. I don’t have any chromosome data for Ruellia galeottii, but I’m sure curious to know if it is diploid. Someday, I’d really like to study this clade.

Wild collected, Mexico, Tripp & Dexter #159 (DUKE), photo by Erin Tripp