Ipomoea purpurea (L.) Lam.

• Title

  Ipomoea purpurea (L.) Lam.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton

• Scientific Name

  Ipomoea purpurea (L.) Lam.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Ipomoea purpurea Purple Garden Morning-glory Family Convulvaceae Morning-glory Family Convolvulus purpureus Linnaeus, Species Plantarum, edition 2. 219. 1762. Ipomoea purpurea Lamarck, Tableau Encyclopédie Méthodique l: 466. 1791. Frequently grown in gardens as an ornamental vine, and thus widely distributed in tropical and temperate regions, this species is a native of tropical continental America. It is spontaneous from seed, and is occasionally seen along roads and in waste grounds in Porto Rico. No popular Spanish name has been recorded. For an account of the genus we refer to our description of Ipomoea polyanthes. Ipomoea purpurea (purple flowers, but they vary to nearly blue, or to white) is an herbaceous, twining or trailing vine, becoming about 3 meters long, or shorter, the stem and branches retrorsely hairy. The long-stalked, broadly ovate, thin, untoothed leaves are from 5 to 12 centimeters wide, with a pointed apex and a heart-shaped base. The retrorsely hairy, axillary flower-stalks are commonly longer than the leaf-stalks, and bear from 1 to 5 flowers; the lance-shaped, pointed sepals, hairy toward the base, are from 10 to 16 millimeters long; the purple corolla, with a white tube, is 5 or 6 centimeters long, the wavy-margined limb about as broad. The depressed-globose capsule is about 10 millimeters in diameter, the seeds smooth.