Re: Ipomea indica vine (Blue dawn flower)

If this is the perennial morning glory I'm thinking of, I would avoid 
it at all cost. Yes, the deep violet blue color is striking, but at a 
house I used to rent in Pasadena, Calif., it had become the worst 
weed imaginable. It sends out these runner vines, both just under the 
soil surface and just above it that, for example rapidly travel along 
underneath the lawn grass where they aren't immediately visible, and 
they root at intervals along the way, so that even if you discover 
them and pull them out, at some point the vine breaks, but if a 
rooted section is unknowingly left behind, it will grow a complete 
new vine from that point. This vine also sent runners under the 
entire house (in the crawl space under the house) that then emerged 
at various points in front of the house from which it started growing 
up the walls of the house. One runner found a crack in the floorboard 
of a storage room and tried to grow in the weak light entering that 
room--inside!. Before I moved in, it had completely covered the tops 
of both the orange and lemon trees growing in the back yard as well 
as a neighbor's live oak, seriously weakening the trees by cutting 
off all the sunlight. It was even making an attempt to smother some 
banana plants as well. To me it seemed far worse than running bamboo 
mainly because it was much quicker in it's runner growth in every 
direction. I would never plant it in a climate that is mild enough 
that it doesn't kill the above-ground growth every winter.

--Lee Poulsen


>I would like to learn a little more about this perennial morning glory,
>especially about how you may have used it in your Medit gardens -- up a
>trellis, over a wall, groundcover, or scrambling up another plant?  Also,
>what kind of pruning/thinning do you do, if any at all?  I understand that
>the bloom time can be extremely long, with masses of the purple-blue flowers
>well into autumn.  If the plant becomes a bit too vigorous for ones space,
>can it be successfully maintained to a smaller size, say 8-10 feet instead of
>20?
>
>Thank you in advance for all responses!   C. Carter, California, Z9

-- 
--Lee Poulsen
Pasadena area, California, USDA Zone 9-10
wlp@radar-sci.jpl.nasa.gov
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