Morning stars
These glorious plants put on a dazzling daily show – but it’s all over by noon
IT HAS been more than a decade since I first witnessed a moonflower vine bloom, yet I can still recall the event clearly. I was sitting outdoors on a warm evening with my chair turned towards the leafy climber, which completely covered a 7ft wigwam of canes.
As the light began to fade, a number of tightly coiled, pointed buds unfurled slowly into saucer-shaped, 6in-wide white flowers with a powerful perfume.
By morning, the blooms had withered and eventually dropped, but the plant repeated its nocturnal display every night until the early autumn.
Known botanically as Ipomoea alba, moonflower is an unorthodox morning glory, a family of annual climbers that normally flower during the day. Yet its quirky behaviour isn’t the reason I was so excited to see it bloom for the first time. It was simply because I’d nurtured this stunner from seeds sown a few months before. As a result of my success, I tried more varieties the following year and was equally delighted with the outcome.
From then on I was hooked, growing so many seedlings that I ended up giving the surplus to friends, selling them for charity and even giving some to Alan Titchmarsh for a magazine photoshoot.
Morning glories are very easy to rear from seeds sown in small pots indoors during April and May.
In my experience, seeds germinate in little over a week, growing into vigorous vines that will flower from June until October, depending on when they were started.
Apart from one or two night-blooming rarities, most produce flowers that start to open when the sun rises. The flowers begin to fade at lunch- time and by mid-afternoon they have withered and dropped to the ground, leaving no evidence of the floral feast from just a few hours before.
This vast family of plants are native to warmer parts of the world, such as South America, the Mediterranean and parts of East Asia, where the twining stems can be found making their way up trees and shrubs, clambering over rocks and carpeting banks.
A flurry of wild varieties arrived in Britain during the 18th and 19th Centuries, providing nurserymen with the materials to produce loads of showy varieties in shades of white, pink, purple, blue and red. Some have petals that are streaked, striped, spotted or with edges in a contrasting shade. Perhaps the most widely grown is Ipomoea tricolor ‘Heavenly Blue’, which will easily scramble up to 10ft and is adored for its large, azure-blue trumpets. Garden designer Gertrude Jekyll was a fan, remarking that there is ‘no lovelier or purer blue.’ All morning glory seeds are protected by a hard outer shell that can inhibit germination. To improve the success rate when you’re starting from scratch, soak in warm water overnight before sowing individually, ½in deep, into 2in pots of multi-purpose compost. Place in a heated propagator until the seeds have germinated.
Another option is to raise them in Jiffy-7s – compressed compost pellets enclosed by thin netting, which expand when soaked in water. Once roots appear through the sides of the netting, move young plants into small pots and repot regularly until they are ready to go outdoors in late May.
These climbers are OK in light shade but will really flourish in fertile, moisture-retentive soil in full sun. Set them against trellis attached to walls and fences, or train them up obelisks, wigwams or other vertical structures, either in the ground or in large containers.
I SENT A BATCH TO ALAN TITCHMARSH FOR A PHOTOSHOOT