Moonflower

First one to open, around 7:30 this evening. Thanks Shoe!

Beautiful :) I wish mine would start bloomin :)

Janis

Janis,

I know! Mine have been budding for quite some time, this one finally opened with plenty more to follow (I hope). ☺

I've had but 2 blooms so far, 1st one day before yesterday.

I planted a few different colors of this 1 and I've only seen blooms of the white 1. Now I can't tell if the other colored ones are still there as they all intertwined so much. Do any of you have any other colors than white? I'd love to get my hands on some for next year. Maybe they will suprise me this summer, it's not over yet;)
Nice pics guys.
JD

How beautiful,

I can't grow these for the life of me.. it must be too hot here.

Beautiful....some one sent me seeds and I tried but no success.....I still have few , is there any body who can tell me propogation procedure of seeds because seeds are very hard like stone.
Kaleem

I soak my seeds for 24 hours before i plant them. I plant them in a big pot...and forget about them, all the sudden they start popping up. Mine have been blooming for 2 months now, thousands of blooms each night, and now I have tons of seeds.

OK,.....thousands? I get ONE every week or so, and glad to have it. LOL

And take LOTS of pics of that ONE....

And then line them all up and pretend I have LOTS of blooms ;-)

Kaleem,
Take a nail clipper and nip the seed at one end, then soak it for a day till it swells up, then plant. Make sure you do not leave them in the water too long or they will get ruined, I think they get like sour. Anyway, you might want to soak them for half a day. The other thing you can do is file the seed coat till you break through the shell, then soak the seed.

Mine all germinate, but, the heat kills them.

Hopefully there will be someone else with some tips.

Big Red, I always love a kibbitz about the moonvine. Thanks for this thread. Did not get mine sown this year, but neighbor Sandy has them blooming on her porch for all passersby to enjoy. It's growing in a 12" pot and she gives it a quart of water every other day. Thanks for the pics everyone.

I have 4 vines planted in a container on my deck. Beautiful lush leaves, completely covering a 4 X 8 section of lattice. Not a bud or bloom in sight. Thank you for providing proof that they do bloom, I was starting to wonder. I'm doubting I'll actually get any blooms, and since it's in a container, I don't think I will plant it again next year unless I mix a few in with my morning glories just for the folage.

mg

Very nice flower! Are moonflowers fragrant? Just curious.

Joseph

Oh, they are 'heavenly'. LOL
Really, they smell wonderful!

Thank you much for the tips..... can I sow now or wait and after cold season? What is best time for sowing Moon flower seeds? Is this also invasive like MGs?
Kaleem

gumlla, It's better to sow moonflowers soon after the last frost in spring rather than shortly before the first frost in fall. Further south than we are, I understand these vines will self-sow, but haven't heard of their being too invasive. Sometimes we just plant them directly in the ground in May, but they do better for us started in peat pots indoors early in April. There's a lot of good information in this link from DG's PlantFiles: http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/893/index.html

It's especially fun to read other people's thoughts and experiences about such a treasured flower, and that link is wonderful in that respect. I hope you give this plant a try.

Very nice! I finally got outside a few weeks ago and caught a photo of mine. My vine has been pretty scraggly this year, but it's making a few seedpods. I think I probably need to grow it elsewhere next spring.

Joseph,

Moonflowers are very fragrant, like sweet perfume. I was surprised by the intensity of the aroma. ☺

Here's a picture I took this evening, finally got more than one blossom per night. As you can see, there are many more buds.

Pretty good shot of some of my backyard, weeds in the garden, my tractor, etc. Also shows some dipper gourds growing on our fence. I got these seed from Shoe last year.

Thanks, Big Red, for the information and the pictures! Will definitely have to try this one out.

Joseph

Sorry if this is a "well, duh!" question but...

Morning glory, the kind that blooms in the daytime, also comes in white, right? If so, does it have a special name?

I'm growing the Moonflower I. alba but have not any blooms yet. The MG's that I grew from a bag of supposedly "Clark's Heavenly Blue" seeds produced a white MG (in addition to some Flying Saucer).

Hi Quyen,
Yes,there are many different spacies of Morning Glories that bloom during the day and have a white colored flower...It looks like your HB packet contained a mixture of Ipomoea tricolor cultivars and the white flowered Ipomoea tricolor is known as "Pearly Gates"...even though there looks like there are some leaves of Ipomoea purpurea in the picture...the large white flower from the way it looks, is from one of the I.tricolor vines...
Thanks for your question...
Ron

Good eyes, Ron. Yes, I do have I. purpurea "Star of Yelta" growing with the I. tricolor. I started out with two half barrels of the same number and combination of seedlings. One barrel gets the morning sun and the other gets the afternoon sun (they're at opposite ends of and below the deck). Interestingly, the blues from the tricolor do better on the eastside whereas the whites do better on the west side. The purpurea seems to do well everywhere.

Hi Quyen,
When you say 'better',do you mean that the vines are more vigorous or that the blooms last longer...I'm curious to know the effect of the morning sun compared with the afternoon sun...Is the temperature much different when the plants on the eastside see the sunlight from the temperature when the plants on the westside are seeing the sunlight(?)...
Please let me know...
Thanks(!)...

moonflower with fall clematis

jmorth - WOW(!)...that is a really nice picture...those two look like they were made for each other...

That is a great picture, jmorth. The moonflower seems to glow. I'm still waiting for mine to get big. (whining)

Ron:
Both barrels started out the same but I think the eastside one is more vigorous because it doesn't have the hot pm sun beating on it. It gets shade from 11 am on. Regarding how long the blooms last: the purpurea folds up faster (usually by 2 pm) than the tricolor. Out of all the tricolors, 'Pearly Gates' stay open the longest. I only have 'Pearly' on the westside but they stay open to late afternoon, just as the blue mix on the eastside, usually till around 5 pm. On unusually cool days (HI in the high 70's), they stay open (but a bit floppy) till about 7 or 8 pm. Hope that made sense to you.

Both of the pics were a taken at 5 pm. Whites from the westside and blues from the eastside. You can see that their edges were beginning to curl up a bit.

Quyen - White reflects light more than any darker colors...helping the blooms to absorb less heat and have less moisture loss...many of the tropical beach species that are subjected to alot of both direct and reflected light have alot of reflective particles in the blooms this allows the flowers to not absorb too much heat and so stay open longer to get more cross pollination...
Thanks for your reply(!)...

Aahhhhh(!)
I just love the way you talk(!)...So scientific.

noblesse obligé...

Ron, you're keeping our curiosity alive. Thanks to you, I chased down a website with morning glory science, art (Japanese Edo period) and encyclopedic photos/text covering a huge range of species and cultivars. Will post on separate thread as soon as I figure out the image browser.
Thanks, Karen

bluespiral - Thanks for your interest...I usually try to post the link to Dr.Yonedas Homepage on MG's every couple weeks,as people continue to ask about sites that go into more detail on many aspects of the MG's,including crossing experiments...
Thanks Again for expressing your self-motivation to look deeper into this subject ...
Enjoy(!)...

Man I'm so envious seeing colored moonflower vines. I had 4 or 5 colors going but I'm only seeing white so far. Does anyone else have any colors going?
My moonflower bushes are really going but mostly the white 1's too. I had my first double yellow do about a 1/2 bloom the other day. The double/triple purples are going pretty good too. Ho[pefully the yellow will turn out better soon.
Nice pics Ya'll;)
JD

Now I'm confused! :-0
I didn't know there were colored moonflower vines. I want some colors.......

Can't hardly beat the white though.
Susan

JD, are you referring to datura or brugmansia species or cultivars? Are your plants vines or bushes? If bushes, how tall are they? What colors do you have? How are the flowers shaped?

There's an old moonflower thread that includes a 'Shoe story and a quest for the blue moonflower. I think it might be in bad taste for me to keep posting it. Do you want me to?

Might not be a bad idea to follow up on that thread and ask QueenB how her blue moonflower quest is coming along.

Mine was doing so good and then all of a sudden it looks awful : (

Hi,
It sure does sound like JLD_ II is talking about an entirely different Family(Solanaceae),rather than Convolvulaceae...especially when referring to bushes that are double yellows and triple purples...
There are colored moonvines(!) in the database if you look at Ipomoea muricata(which is an outdated term for Ipomoea turbinata) here
http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/31933/index.html

and Ipomoea turbinata here
http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/69456/index.html

and Ipomoea macrorhiza posted here
http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/53206/index.html


There are small yellow moonvines from China
http://natureproducts.net/Forest_Products/Convolvulaceae/evening_glory.html

There is another purple moonvine...the botanical name is Ipomoea calantha,but I don't know anyone who has any plants or seeds...it is native to Puerto Rico and other areas of the Caribbean...

Hope some of this info helps...
TTY'all...

The double and triple yellows and purples I spoke of are all Datura's. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear on that.
I was sent seeds of the moonflower vines and some were labeled red, lavender, pink, white and 1 other color if I recall correctly. Sadly I had very few of the colored seeds and I only see tons of white blooms so far. I'm hoping the colored ones are just slow like the colored datura's seem to be. My Datura Inoxia(white bush) blooms so early in the season until a hard freeze. The Purple doube and triple datura's were a good month behind the whites and the yellow just bloomed for the 1st time last week. The colored ones are much taller bushes and the purples have purple stalks. The yellow have green stems and stalks. I'm holding out hope that a few other green stemmed ones maybe different colors too.
I'm not very educated at all with the moonflower vines, I do know the brugs and Datura's pretty well. I sure appreciate the help in trying to figure out whats what. I hope I haven't hijacked and/or sidetracked this thread as well, I apologize if I have and will edit out posts if you like.
I'll try to get out to take some pictures and make some better observations of differing growth characteristics if there are any. I just had surgery last week to remove 2 bone chips from my tailbone and sacrum:(. I'm a paraplegic and I have no sensation in that area so I never know when I'm doing damage to myself in that area. I'm having to be very careful to not tear out any sutures and the like so I'm not getting around the yard and gardens like I want to. It's driving me crazy not being as active as I'd like to be darnit. Tis life I reckon, surely I can get a run of goodluck and get to enjoy the rest of the season. Thanks for your patients friends;)
JD

JD, some of us on this thread love the tangents and detours a thread can take and find the crossroads where gardening, each others' lives, literature, music, science, etc. meet to be our very favorite places. You're among friends here.

Many "unrelated" plants have been called moonflowers - all because of the way they conjure up the effect of the moon and stars at night. Oxeye daisies spangling tall grass in summer are often referred to as moonflowers in old garden books. Can anyone else think of another one?

Hope you're following doctor's orders. Do you like to read old garden books/natural history? I'll put together a list of hyperlinks and post again here.