Fears for ‘morning glory’ beach flower

A TYPE of flower that grows in the sand is on the brink of “extinction” in the TRNC, an environmental group has warned.

Members of the “Herdaim Dostlar” (Forever Friends) organisation held an event recently at Silver Beach in Gazimağusa to draw attention to the plight of the Beach Morning Glory (Ipomea stolonifera) plant, also known locally as “sand ivy” or the “pipe flower”.

Forever Friends say that problems such as “uncontrolled construction, soil transportation, the transportation of invasive plant species to sand dunes, and pollution of the coastal dunes due to caravans”, particularly in the “protected area of Silver Beach in Gazimağusa”, are causing the numbers of the flower to “decrease day by day”.

Speaking at the event, Forever Friends environmental education and management specialist Dr Asuman Korukoğlu said that although the Ipomea stolonifera plant is

“under protection in our country”, it is at risk due to “environmental destruction, especially in the Silver Beach area”.

Dr Korukoğlu explained that the populations

of the flower at Silver Beach, Long Beach, Glapsides Beach and on the Bafra coast were in “good condition until the 1990s but now they are at risk of extinction”.