Oh, Henry.

He was right, of course:

The blue dawn flower, Ipomoea acuminata, is finally in bloom, and so gracious are its three-inch salvers deeper than sky blue that I cannot complain, though I like it to begin in June, not September. As my plant was new this spring it got started late, and I hope next year will find it blooming right through the summer.

....

The flowers are borne in small clusters on six-inch stems, and while you would say they are the purest of blue, they in fact have much red in them, and this gives the color a somewhat electric quality such as you see in some gentians.

....

Other glorious vines flower now, along with this morning glory, which by the way is rather similar to the often seen 'Heavenly Blue', but which I think is even more beautiful and exciting.

I've wanted this plant since reading about it in January, but I didn't make any effort to hunt it down from a mail-order nursery, strangely...I had this feeling in my bones that I would run into it when the time was right (which is somewhat illogical, since this is a plant that is far from hardy in this zone). And last weekend at the big box, there they were: several fine, full-grown and blooming specimens. I'm a huge fan of 'Heavenly Blue', but Henry Mitchell's right: there's more to the blue in this plant, and it keeps blooming all day long, not just in the morning or when it's sunny. (This picture was taken in mid-afternoon, under cloudy skies, two minutes prior to a major downpour.) As the afternoon turns to evening, the blue will shade to violet, and in the morning, the edges of the bud curl as the flower is finished. Oh yeah, it's not remotely winter-hardy here, which means that I'll need to find a sunlit place indoors to overwinter these. Henry? "I can think of only a few tender plants that are worth the bother of bringing indoors for the winter and setting out again in April and May. But certainly the night jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum), blue dawn flower (Ipomoea acuminata), and white potato vine (Solanum jasminoides) are worth the trouble of getting them safely through the winter." Right again.

Henry Mitchell, Henry Mitchell On Gardening (pub. info here).

Comments

[avril]

Henry's wisdom rings eternal...while reading some in the May chapter last night, I noted that he was talking about the 17 year cicadas which last happened in 1987 (ah, he was still with us!) His sagacity is timeless!

[Chan S.]

I chuckled at the cicada chapter too, as I was leafing through the book for this post. Don't be surprised if excerpts from it make an appearance in a future post this summer!

[Lynn S]

That is very different from my experience with Heavenly Blue. It's my favorite morning glory. I plant seeds in the spring and it finally blooms in midsummer. I guess if I could find plants I could have flowers a lot earlier but I've never seen any. Also, it acts like any other morning glory - closed by noon or earlier. I wonder if the heat has something to do with that. I tend to "close up" when it's 105 outside too. :-)

[Chan S.]

I love Heavenly Blue too, and will be starting seeds for it in a trellised pot soon. Another bit of trivia I forgot to mention in the post is that the Brazilian morning glory has a three-lobed leaf, different than the heart-shaped leaf of Heavenly Blue...but I like 'em all.