Hedge Bindweed (Calystegia sepium)


Photographed September 5.

Even the usual plain white flowers are very attractive. The rarer bicolor forms like this are beautiful—and almost poetic when we add raindrops. The plant may be a pernicious weed, but we should appreciate the beauty even of our pernicious weeds.

We have seen Calystegia sepium before, and we repeat the text of the previous article:

Also called Wild Morning Glory. Hedge Bindweeds do indeed love hedges, but they really come into their own on a chain-link fence. Most often the flowers are white, but sometimes we see a glorious bicolor like this one, which in size and color rivals the cultivated Morning Glory.

Gray makes Calystegia a division of the genus Convolvulus. He describes the genus, division, and species:

CONVOLVULUS [Tourn.] L. BINDWEED
Corolla funnel-form to campanulate. Stamens included. Capsule globose, 2-celled, or imperfectly 4-celled by spurious partitions between the 2 seeds, or by abortion 1-celled, mostly 2-4-valved. Herbs or somewhat shrubby plants, twining, erect, or prostrate. (Name from convolvere, to entwine.)

CALYSTEGIA (R. Br.) Gray. Stigmas oval to oblong; calyx inclosed in
2 broad leafy bracts.

C. sepium L. (HEDGE B.) Glabrous or essentially so; stem high-twining or sometimes trailing extensively; leaves triangular-halberd-shaped, acute or pointed, the basal lobes obliquely truncate and often somewhat toothed or sinuate-lobed or merely rounded ; peduncles chiefly elongated, 4-angled; bracts rounded to sharp-acuminate at tip ; corolla white or rose-color, 3-5 cm. long. (Including var. americanus Sims.) Moist alluvial soil or along streams. June-Sept. (Eurasia.)


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