Wednesday, August 18, 2010

The Morning Glory


These flowers serve as the welcome mat to one of our county beaches, and if I didn't know any better I'd say they were morning glories.

Of course, I don't know any better, therefore I have to guess. It's just that I've never seen morning glories growing in the sand. They're always out in our field or climbing along the marsh grasses on the shoreline.

Since Details-R-Not CBW and CBW Doesn't Have Time to Confirm, she's going to go with the guess of morning glories and adds, "If these aren't morning glories, they're close enough."

FYI - The name of my autobiography will be Close Enough: The Life of an Almost-Underachiever.
Whether these are images of morning glories or toaster ovens, I'd like to talk briefly about morning glories, which do grow wild around here. Somewhere.

My BFF Wikipedia says this about them:

The flower usually opens in the morning and closes in the afternoon. On a cloudy day, the flower may last until night. The flowers usually start to fade a couple of hours before the petals start showing visible curling.

Because of their fast growth, twining habit, attractive flowers, and tolerance for poor, dry soils, some morning glories are excellent vines for creating summer shade on building walls when trellised, thus keeping the building cooler and reducing heating and cooling costs.

The morning glory represents "love in vain" for whatever outside circumstances according to the Victorian "Language of Flowers", which attributed various properties and sentiments to flowers so that people could communicate their feelings by what flowers were given as gifts, such as those by a suitor to their loved one.

The seeds can produce a similar effect to LSD when taken in the hundreds.

Moral of the Story: If a suitor hands you a bouquet of morning glories, start chewin' on the seeds.

p.s. I do believe the top two are a "beachified" version of morning glory, but that last one is some gorgeous flower that grows down among the cattails in the swampy area of my shoreline.

Regardless of what they're technically called, they're technically beautiful.

Have you seen morning glories? If not, is there a similar sort of flower growing wild that you like?

16 comments:

deborah said...

The last photo is a Marsh Mallow...first pictures are very pretty:)
I gave up trying to keep the morning glories from growing along my back fence and now they cover it (and just about everything else in the yard including the lonely tomato plant).
Mine will be 'she came 'a hair of being a responsible adult, realized what was going on and said Whoa..this ain't gonna happen!'

Chesapeake Bay Woman said...

Thanks, deborah - that last one was definitely too big to be a morning glory, just tossed it in for good measure. Never even heard of a marsh mallow except for the ones you eat, and here I've had them in the yard all these years, who knew? (Well, you knew, but I sure didn't.)

We should start a club of adults who wish never to be responsible - am right there with you on that one. Thinking of a name for that group will keep me pleasantly occupied today at work.

Have a great Wednesday! (I'm happy because this is my last day of work for the week plus no work next week due to vacation. In short, I am ECSTATIC.)

Ann Marie said...

hahahahaahah hahahahahah AHHAHAHAHAHAHAH
I am not going to lie I am not FOND of flowers so today I did the track ball skim especially the Wiki part... until I came to a SCREECH halt at "effects like LSD"

hahahahahahaha
I am sick
This is not Jill..
This is me.. Re..
I am still sick.

Country Girl said...

We love morning glories (my husband and I). Here's one from last year:
http://katespictureaday.blogspot.com/2009/09/good-morning.html
This year, he planted purple ones and they are beautiful.
I've seen them growing wild around here, too. There's many different variations of the wild ones!

Jamie said...

The photos are of bindweed (I'm fairly certain) the leaves were too narrow for morning glories. Either way it's pretty. And I obviously have way too much useless information in my head... , it's hard to tell, it's hard to tell When all your love's in vain.... pass the seeds

deborah said...

Yeah to your vacation!
I know you will come up with a clever name for our group..

Daryl said...

Those are morning glories .. the last one is a hibiscus.. and happy almost vacation ...

Amy Brecount White said...

Hi, Chesapeake Bay Woman. I'm jealous of your location!! Love that area.

If you're interested in the language of flowers, you might want to check out my debut novel, Forget-Her-Nots, (Greenwillow/HarperCollins) which puts a new spin on garden magic. It's for girls ages 11 and up, but gardeners of all ages are enjoying it.

White bellflowers and orange crocuses to you!

Amy

www.amybrecountwhite.com

Trisha said...

I never knew that chewing the seeds of morning glories would have that effect. We have wild morning glories EVERYWHERE here.

Noe Noe Girl...A Queen of all Trades. said...

I'm off to collect morning glory seeds. I wont even have to leave the farm!
Come visit on your vacation! The bar is open!
<><

Anonymous said...

kudos to Deborah for identifying the marsh mallow! she stole my comment! It grows all over the Tidewater region in wet areas.

Beautiful!!

AMN
anonymous Mathews native

Audrey at Barking Mad said...

We have marsh mallows all over Maine in the tidewater and wetlands areas. Love them! Even the kind you squish between graham crackers too...sans chocolate because frankly, I think chocolate is nasty!

Where was I?

Oh, that's right, seeing about ordering morning glories so I can harvest the seeds and start myself a little side business.

foolery said...

Who knew that marsh mallows had seeds?

I'm so confused.

Anyway, I was going to say what Daryl said: hibiscus. But I steenk at plant identification. And at toilet scrubbing. In case you were wondering.

Diane said...

The mallow are called lavetera here and are lavender or white. They do look morning glory-ish when they;re closed.
I wouldn't know a hibiscus if it barfed on me.
I don't think there's any chance someone is going to come a-wooing. Or sparking. Or courting.
Probably just as well. The Old Goat wouldn't care for it!

Mental P Mama said...

Whatever they are, I like 'em;)

Chesapeake Bay Woman said...

Well thank goodness y'all know your flowers!

Jamie, I've never heard of a bindweed - sounds painful actually.

Bindweeds and marsh mallows - learn something new every day.

Amy - Thank you for commenting, your book sounds wonderful. I checked our your site - congratulations on the book, and it's great to hear from a fellow Wahoo.

Speaking of which, thanks Anonymous Mathews Native for your expertise. This is part of the "riparian buffer" that never gets cut for obvious reasons, and the most beautiful things grow there.

Thanks to all of you for reading my silliness and for commenting. The comments always make my day.