Sunday, November 04, 2012

Oklahoma Flowering Vine - pics

 








Edmond is the third largest city in Oklahoma. Though mostly urban, there are many wooded creeks and undeveloped areas. My office is near such a creek and undeveloped, wooded area. Last week there were eight wild turkeys outside my office. There is a vine growing near the parking lot that flowers abundantly any time it rains (rare during the past two years of drought conditions here in Oklahoma.) They are bigger than morning glories and look like moonflowers, except they bloom during the day. These flowers were likely planted by some early settler, fifty, maybe a hundred years ago. Maybe someone that left for California on Route 66 during the Dust Bowl days. Does anyone know what they are?

Eric'sWeb

1 comment:

Orby the gardner said...

Eric,

I am so glad you posted this as I found a nearly identical flowering vine several places along the highway going west from Kingfisher to Watonga. The leaves were nearly identical to those in the picture you posted but the flower has much more purple at the center and the ruffling along the edges are is more pronounced.

I spotted these as shortly after wheat harvest and burning of the stubble in the fields we had several showers and with in a week these were coming up all over and have continued to bloom profusely.

They do seem to have a blooming habit like a morning glory as the flower last only a day but on each of these plants, (current each plant has 3 - 6 runners that are 4 8 foot long) there are 15 - 20 blooms daily and they are jus magnificent. I have gather up about 35 - 40 seeds and are going to try and start some indoors and see if I can grow thru the winter.

With their apparent tolerance to poor sandy soil and dry conditions, I want to try and put these in my hanging baskets and window boxes so they will trail down.

I will let you know how the seeds respond to planting but thanks again for posting this.