show Abstracthide AbstractIn present work, we constructed an artificial F1 hybrid between the red-flowered Ruellia elegans Poir. and yellow-flowered Ruellia speciosa Lindau and then generated corolla (i.e., petal) and leaf transcriptome data for the two parents plus the hybrid. We used these data to (1) quantify transgressive elements in transcriptomes of hybrid progeny, then (2) to assess the overall potential of floral novelty that derives from unions of divergent genomes. These data establish genomic resources for a large lineage of flowering in plants (Ruellia: Wild Petunias, ~350 species; Acanthaceae family) in which numerous evolutionary transitions in flower color have occurred but have not yet been investigated from a molecular perspective