Triodanis Species, Colorado Venus' Looking-Glass, Western Venus' Looking Glass

I have not grown this plant, but have observed it in its native habitat.

Colorado Venus' looking-glass is also commonly ca...Read Morelled western Venus' looking glass. It derives its common name from its very shiny tiny seed that resembles a mirror. It is an erect endemic plant that only is found natively growing in dry rocky soils on ledges, rocky hills, open woodlands, edges of floodplains and gravel bars in the South Texas Plains and the Edwards Plateau regions. It typically is about 2 feet tall, but can reach 30 inches under very favorable conditions. Normally, it has a solitary stem that has a few branches in the upper portion. The stem and branches are thin and delicate.and it has elliptic (twice as long as wide) leaves that are about 2 to 2 7/8 inches long and 1/2 inch wide. They are alternate with the lower ones being short-stalked and the upper ones stalkless.

The 1/2 to 3/4 inch, 5-petalled (fused into a short stem) blooms are blue-violet with white inside the tube. The petals may have whitish streaks. Each bloom has 5 sepals which are united into a tube and appears solitarily from the upper leaf axils. Actually, it has two types of blooms: the showy upper flowers which appear later in the plant's growth are open at pollination and the lower flowers which appear first are small, closed and self-pollinating. The seed are in a capsule. When mature, a part of the capsule rolls upward which exposes a slit in the capsule. The seeds then escape.

Colorado Venus' Looking-Glassg-Glass, Triodanis coloradoensis, is Endemic to Texas.