A Few Members of the Acanthaceae Family

In the past few years, I’ve photographed thousands of types of flowers – which means there are thousands and thousands of photos on my hard drive that haven’t been edited or shared with anyone. Sometimes I’ll have enough photos to write a blog post on a specific flower. Other times, I’ll only have one or two photos – which just aren’t enough for a separate blog post. So what I’ve decided to do this year – is work my way through the backlog of photos – editing and sharing them. And when I’ve got several that are members of the same botanical family – share them - rather than holding them back in hopes of eventually having enough photos of specific photo to do a separate post on them.

So here’s the first of these blog posts – some photos of members of the Acanthaceae family.

The Acanthaceae or acanthus family has about 2500 species in it – and the number is growing as more plants are discovered and classified. Members of this family tend to originate in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, Africa and Central America.

The member of this family I see most often at local botanical gardens is the Shrimp Plant – Justicia Brandigeana.

Brazillian Plume – Justicia carnea belongs to the same genus as the shrimp plants

Lollipop plants – pacyhstachys lutea

Fiery Spike – aphelandra aurantiaca

Clock Vine – Thunbergia mysorensis – this intricate vine is native to both Southern Spain and Southern India.

As you can see – members of the Acanthaceae family can look very different. I’m looking forward to discovering more members of the family.