Morning Glory Homepage PAGE 2. (C) 2000

I have a friend in Pennsylvania who grew this "RAINBOW", one of the many variations of the Ipomoea Nil variety! Huge enlargement of this photo

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KEY TO NUMBERED PHOTOS ABOVE:

1. Heavenly Blue (Ipomoea Tricolor) world's favorite 2. Candy Pink (Ipomoea Nil) from 1955 3. Heavenly Blue 4. Flying Saucers (Ipomoea Tricolor) from 1960 5. Cornell or Giant Cornell (Ipomoea Nil) 6. "Bush Morning Glory" (Ipomoea Fistulosa) 7. (Ipomoea Aquatica) 8. "Blue Dawn Flower" (Ipomoea Learii) 9. Cardinal Climber (Ipomoea Coccinea) 10.(Ipomoea Sagittata) 11. Common or Wild Morning Glory (Ipomoea Purpurea) 12. Summer Skies (Ipomoea Tricolor) 13. Blue Star (Ipomoea Tricolor) 14. Wedding Bells (Ipomoea Tricolor)

INFORMATION ON NUMBERED PHOTOS:

1. Look at these!! Heavenly Blue - The world's most popular morning glory. This plant is Ipomoea Tricolor, native to Mexico. It has been grown as a beautiful ornamental in the U.S. since about 1890. In 1936, Clarke found the "Clarke's Extra Early Strain" that blooms in about 90 days from planting instead of about 120 days. Probably all the Heavenly Blue sold today is descended from this strain.

2. Ipomoea Nil - Candy Pink - isn't that amazing! It was introduced for the 1955 growing season by the late Darold Decker. In person, the blooms look like cotton candy. I have a few seeds of this that I will grow to build up seed stock.

3. Ipomoea Tricolor - Heavenly Blue again - Ahh, a beautiful mound of leaves, too! These always come out looking purple when photographed, but I fiddled with the color balance on Adobe Photoshop and this is what they really look like.

4. Ipomoea Tricolor - Flying Saucers - WOW! This one is stunning, especially when you have a lot of them on a vine. It was the best mutation that the late Darold Decker found in his vast fields of Pearly Gates (which itself was a pure white mutation of Heavenly Blue another company introduced in 1942). Mr. Decker introduced this for the 1960 growing season. He died in 1963. All of the Ipomoea Tricolor morning glories all have that creamy yellow center. Darold Decker's Very First FLYING SAUCERS Ad ever! (124 K)

5. Ipomoea Nil - Cornell - a beautiful one - sorry it's out of focus. The flower is about 4 inches across, deep maroon or magenta, with a light pink rim around the edge. I'm trying to grow this one to get more seed. This one, belonging to a friend in NY, is from the only one that sprouted from a seed packet found a couple of years ago, dated 1963!!

6. Ipomoea Fistulosa - "Bush Morning Glory." Can grow to 8 feet tall by 5 feet wide, loaded with these flowers.

7. Ipomoea Aquatica (Chinese Water Spinach) Leaves and stems eaten as a salad vegetable. (CAUTION - Never eat ANY plant of uncertain identification - some are deadly poison. Ipomoea has over 500 species. Do not eat ANY wild morning glory, many look alike!!)

8. Ipomoea Learii, the Blue Dawn Flower. It is a purplish blue. Loads of leaves, and loads of flowers. Now grows wild in California. A serious agricultural pest in New Zealand, and other areas.

9. Ipomoea coccinea, and this one is a trilobed leaf variation. I'm building seed of the related red Cypress Vine, and the more rare white flowered Cypress Vine, both of which are Ipomoea (Quamoclit) Pennata, identified by the feathery leaves of many thin needles that make the outline of a heart. (Whew!)

10. Ipomoea Sagittata

11. Ipomoea Purpurea (common morning glory) This has a bloom about 2 inches across, and exists in purple, white, red, pink, and blue. I think the blue one has a 1 inch flower - I'll check the J.L. Hudson 1998 catalog. There is a "black" morning glory, called "Kniola's Purple Black", or maybe "Grandpa Ott's," but it is not black, just a very dark purple.

12. Ipomoea Tricolor SUMMER SKIES - This one was lost from about 1980. UPDATE seeds found in 2003 on Ebay called "pale blue" that successfully germinated and gave extremely good results (see the picture). After much research I determined that they are in fact the same as Summer Skies. Summer Skies was sold from about 1962 to about 1980? It is a mutation of Heavenly Blue, having the pale blue color of the sky in summertime. this is the pale version of heavenly blue that was sold in the 60's and 70's but was lost. I searched for this between 1997 and 2001 with no success and lots of false leads and incorrect information. I now believe that Ipomoea Tricolor naturally mutates into other varieties on rare occasions, which is how we got the varieties like Wedding Bells, Pearly Gates, and Flying Saucers, as well as this one.

13. ..Ipomoea Tricolor - Blue Star (Picture Above) - Very pale blue with a dark blue five-armed "star" radiating from the center to the edges, with the creamy yellow center. Again, it is yet another mutation of Heavenly Blue that showed up in the 1930's.

14. Ipomoea Tricolor - Wedding Bells - More photos are on the Weding Bells Page. Commercially available NOWHERE. It is exactly like Heavenly Blue except for the main color - it is a very beautiful "rosy-lavender", but has the same creamy yellow center. It is a mutation of Heavenly Blue that the late Darold Decker introduced for the 1962 growing season. This was my main "save it from extinction" project of 1998. As of 2005, at least 30 people known to me are now growing it and saving seeds. I occasionally have seeds for it available on Ebay. There are discussions of it on dave's garden forums at davesgarden.com (dave's garden is another dave, not me!)

20 NEW PHOTOS! Click on small pictures: A PAGE OF NEW PICTURES! (PAGE 6)

Japanese Morning Glory Links: SEE AMAZING MORNING GLORIES in JAPAN! (PAGE 7)

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