Ruellia macrantha

I am always suckered in when a label says ‘rare’ or ‘uncommon’ and when the nursery staff see me looking and tell me it has beautiful pink flowers, then I’m definitely a goner. This is exactly what happened to cause me to bring home a pot of Ruellia macrantha - also known as ‘Christmas Pride’ (which must be entirely influenced by our Northern Hemisphere collectors, as the plant is native to central Brazil). During summer it is an unassuming shrub, with light green leaves, but through late Autumn and Winter it throws out big heads of flared, trumpet shaped, magenta flowers. The flowers are 8-10cm across and remind me a little bit of azalea flowers, as the petals are quite delicate. The plant grows to around 1.5m high and responds well to being cut back after flowering otherwise it does tend to get a little leggy.

It loves a spot in dappled shade with moist, well-drained soil, and occurs naturally in and on the edge of forests. The general region in Brazil it comes from is the Cerrado - a vast tropical woodland savannah next to the Amazon that is a biodiversity hot spot and home to thousands of endemic species (i.e., they don’t occur naturally anywhere else). Like the Amazon, the Cerrado is under threat, but unlike the Amazon, it doesn’t have the same proportion of protected areas and is under threat from deforestation and conversion to farmland.

Despite being less well-known, both Ruellia macrantha and the Cerrado are worth having. Spread the word.