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The adventures of a girl hopelessly in love with nature.
04   Jun
Wild Petunia vs. Mexican Petunia
Filed Under (Seminole County) by Kristie on 04-06-2010

This week’s Spotlight Plants are the Native Wild Petunia and the Mexican Petunia. They look similar, but one is drastically better for the environment. Can you guess which one? :)

Native: Wild Petunia

source: Carrboro Citizen

This perennial is native to the U.S. and stretches from Florida all the way north to the Carolinas and west to Texas. It’s flowers can be purple, pink, or sometimes white and bloom during the spring and summer seasons. The flowers live up to only one day, but bloom everyday during their season. Wild petunia is drought resistant and can be used in full sun or partial sun. The plant also attracts butterflies, in particular the common buckeye butterfly:


source: HistoryCentral

Invasive: Mexican Petunia

source: aggi-horticulture

Don’t let this plant distract you with it’s beauty! It looks very similar to the native version and is quite a beautiful plant, but also happens to be a Category 1 invasive plant in Florida. Unlike hurricanes, a Category 1 here stands for the highest threat level. Mexican Petunia is very resistant to heat and drought, is adaptable to many different environments, and seeds profusely. This combines to create a very harmful invasive species. This plant is sold over the internet and at garden centers by people who may not realize it’s affects to the environment. We can stop the problem ourselves by not purchasing plants that are invasive to our native flora.

Thanks for reading about this week’s spotlight plants and caring about our native flora. Hope you have a great weekend :)

sources: IFIS, The Ledger

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Comments:
4 Comments posted on "Wild Petunia vs. Mexican Petunia"
Wilma Ham on June 7th, 2010 at 1:29 am #

If you wouldn’t know you absolutely go for the invader. We too have very invasive plants which are actually not invasive in their home town but are here.
We have gorse that behaves itself in Scotland where it is too cold for the plant to go berserk, but here in ideal New Zealand conditions it grows and grows and grows, no cold climate to stop it. This is interesting as no plant by nature is bad but do not uproot them, it is like that with people too sometimes. Well, you can see this gets me excited as well. xox Wilma

[Reply]

Kristie Reply:
June 8th, 2010 at 1:04 pm

Wilma,

Yes, that’s exactly the trick to invasives! They are fine and controlled in their homeland, but you uproot them and change their habitat and they will flourish. The air potato, my number one enemy, came here from Africa when the slaves were being transported to the U.S. I think sometimes that it is karma and what goes around comes around. Maybe, maybe not! I hear you have many invasive animal species as well to go along with the plants over there? It really is a crazy cycle, but I guess after so many years of people traveling from one country to the next it is bound to reach each piece of land. Then zoo animals escape, etc. If everyone chipped in to their states/countries and tried to help remove the invasives, there could be huge progress. The problem is that many people have no idea how extensive the damage is or that it even really exists. That’s why we are here to try and educate :)

[Reply]

Tess The Bold life on June 7th, 2010 at 10:40 pm #

Oh I love both petunias…I can’t get enough of that smell and color;) Thanks for pointing out the nature of things…oops I mean flowers:)

[Reply]

Kristie Reply:
June 8th, 2010 at 1:09 pm

ha! Yes, they are beautiful indeed. It is understandable that people would buy the non native version and think nothing of it. I would have done the same thing not too long ago! People need to be educated so that they can make the right decision for the health of the plants in their yard and see the outcomes if they do. It will be much easier to maintain and will attract butterflies and birds right in their very own yards :)

[Reply]

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