Abronia ameliae Lundell

Abronia ameliae has limited cultivation as an ornamental in southern Texas.

Plants perennial. Stems procumbent to semierect, slightly to moderately branched, elongate, often reddish at nodes, viscid. Leaves: petiole 1-9 cm; blade deltate-ovate to elliptic, 2-8 × 2-6.5 cm, margins repand to sinuate, frequently undulate, adaxial surface glandular-puberulent, abaxial surface glandular-pubescent. Inflorescences: peduncle longer than subtending petiole; bracts ovate to elliptic, 5-16 × 2-10 mm, papery, glandular-pubescent; flowers 20-75. Perianth: tube magenta, 12-25 mm, limb bright magenta, 8-10 mm diam. Fruits narrowly turbinate, 6-9 × 3-4.5 mm, ± 2 times as long as wide, scarious, base attenuate, rounded or truncate at apex, with a broadly conic beak; wings 5, finely reticulate, thin walled, narrow, cavities extending throughout.

Tex.

Flowering winter-spring.

Sandy soils, live-oak grasslands; 0-100m.

Abronia ameliae, commonly known as Amelia's sand verbena or heart's delight, is a species of flowering plant in the Four O'clock family, Nyctaginaceae, that is endemic to southern Texas in the United States. It inhabits grasslands in the deep sands of the Holocene sand sheet, which is part of the Tamaulipan mezquital. This species was named for Amelia Anderson Lundell, wife of Cyrus Longworth Lundell.