Featured Flower: Morning Glory

“What’s the Story Morning Glory?”  Well, morning glories open each day with the sun.  Evoking the sensuality of a Georgia O’Keefe painting, morning glories are similar in shape to petunias, but with a smaller, tighter petal.  As well as more familiar showy blue and purple-bred flowers, there are native relatives of the plant which tend to be white and pinkish.

There is something so vibrant and happy about these trumpet-like flowers.  Although morning glories begin to flower earlier in the year, they seem especially brilliant at this time of the year.  While the east coast is bursting into fall colors, sometimes the hills around Sonoma seem, well, a little dingy brown in this period after the gold of summer and before the rains return their lush verdant green.  So it is especially invigorating to see a burst of deep blue-purple as you drive along the 101 or climbing the fences on neighborhood streets.

Climb is what morning glories seem to do best.  They are wonderfully, sun-loving vines and will cover unattractive fences and phone polls making your less than wonderful yard features into glorious expressions of blue.

By Nadja Masura