Morning glory

Scientific

Ipomoea contains ~600 species — making it one of the larger plant genera. Principal:

• Ipomoea purpurea — common morning glory; the standard ornamental garden annual
• Ipomoea tricolor — Heavenly Blue morning glory; the iconic large blue-flowered ornamental
• [[sweet-potato|Ipomoea batatas]] — [[sweet-potato]]; the major staple food crop; technically the same genus despite the radically different growth habit
• Ipomoea aquatica — water [[spinach|spinach]] / kangkung; major Asian vegetable
• Ipomoea alba — moonflower; night-blooming, [[hawkmoth|hawkmoth]]-pollinated white relative

The flowers open at dawn and close by midday in most species, fitting the daily-rhythm pollination pattern. Each individual flower lasts a single day; the vines produce hundreds over a season.

Several Mexican Indigenous species (Ipomoea violacea and Turbina corymbosa — sometimes placed in Ipomoea) contain ergoline alkaloids similar to those in [[lysergic-acid]]-producing fungi. Aztec religious practice used the seeds of Turbina corymbosa (ololiuhqui) as a sacred entheogen; the practice was documented and suppressed by Spanish colonial authorities.

Cultural

Morning glory is one of the easiest annual flowers to grow from seed — a common children’s-garden plant in temperate climates worldwide. The Japanese tradition of asagao (morning glory) cultivation is unusually deep — Edo-period morning glory exhibitions selected and named hundreds of cultivars, with form competitions that continue annually in Tokyo to this day.

Hawaiian and Polynesian native morning-glory species (Ipomoea pes-caprae — beach morning glory) play significant ecological roles in coastal dune stabilization.

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

• Member of: [[plants]]
• Cousin of: [[sweet-potato]]

Sources

• Wikipedia — Morning glory

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A plant entry in the 0mn1.one [[directory]].