Back in the spring I wrote about some wild Carolina petunias (Ruellia caroliniensis) that I had seen on the road to my house. Since then, I have been seeing them all over the place. There were a bunch of them outside my office, and they are all over the trails in Gothe State Forest behind my house. I have noticed that as the summer has progressed, the plants have gotten larger (no surprises there), and as the plants increased in size, so have the flowers. They’re still not exactly huge, but they are notably larger. They also are tending to have better color than the spring flowers had.

I really like these flowers. Their color, especially now, is very appealing to me, and I love those textured petals. I shot these photos while on one of my hikes back in late July. I hadn’t been on those particular trails in several weeks and I was very surprised at both the size of the plants and the size of the flowers. This has been an unusual summer in that we haven’t had nearly the normal number of afternoon thunderstorms. We have had rainy days, sometimes several in a row, so we are drier than normal, but not in drought conditions. These plants have flourished under these conditions, but the ones in more sheltered conditions, although doing well, aren’t thriving like those in the open. I’m not sure if it’s more sunlight in the open areas or more rain, but it’s definitely an interesting contrast. I hope to be back on those trails later this week, so I’ll have to see how the petunias are doing now.