Blue Morning Glory Seeds (Ipomoea purpurea)

Ipomoea purpurea

Blue morning glory, morning glory, day glory, morning glory: this last name, translated from the English morning glory, says exactly what happens. Each flower opens at dawn, displays its purest blue throughout the morning, then closes and withers before evening. The next day, others take over—and so on throughout the summer.

Characteristics:

• Ephemeral intense blue: large, funnel-shaped corollas in deep blue, renewed every morning.
• Exuberant growth: it covers large areas very quickly, reaching up to 3 metres.
• Dense foliage: broad, heart-shaped leaves form an opaque plant curtain.

Precautions:

• Morning glory seeds are toxic if ingested: they contain alkaloids and must never be eaten. Keep them out of the reach of children and pets.
• A frost-tender plant, destroyed by the first frosts: it is an annual in our climates, even though it is perennial in tropical regions.

Sowing advice:

• Exposure: full sun—without sufficient heat or light, it produces foliage and few flowers.
• Soil: rich, moist, well-drained and loosened. Unlike its cousin cardinal climber, this one appreciates well-fed soil: in pots, use enriched potting soil. Above all, avoid overly dry soil, which shortens flowering.
• Method: no stratification needed. As the seed coat is hard, soak the seeds for 12 to 24 hours in lukewarm water or lightly scarify them, then sow in spring after the last frosts, 1 cm deep. See how to sow your seeds.

Planting advice:

• Provide support from planting time: trellis, arbour, fence, balcony, tree trunk or stake. It climbs by twining its stems and becomes tangled if left to trail along the ground.

Care advice:

• Water regularly, especially in pots where the growing medium dries out quickly. Guide the young stems onto their support during the first few weeks.

Beneficial combinations:

• Its blue contrasts beautifully with purple morning glory on the same support, or with the warm tones of nasturtium. See combining flowers in the vegetable garden.

Benefits for biodiversity:

• Its wide-open corollas from daybreak provide bees and bumblebees with a valuable resource in the early hours, before most other flowers open.
• Its dense foliage on a support provides shelter and a travel corridor for beneficial insects and birds.

Uses:

• Trellises, arbours, fences, balconies, trailing containers or covering tree trunks. Ideal for creating a plant screen in a single season.

Symbolism:
A flower of a single morning, morning glory symbolises ephemeral beauty and renewal. In Japan, where it has been cultivated since the 8th century under the name asagao, it is the subject of passionate collections and exhibitions.

Harvesting your own seeds:
Allow a few flowers to form their round capsules, then harvest them once they are brown and papery, before they open. Clearly label the packet because of the seeds' toxicity. See how to store your seeds.

Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose reproducible, non-hybrid varieties, tested for their germination rate, sorted and carefully packaged, without any chemical treatment. Our belief: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.

Give yourself a morning rendezvous with the purest blue in the garden.