A small family of climbing or twining herbs having regular, perfect, usually bell or funnel-shaped flowers and alternating leaves.

Hedge Bindweed; Wild Morning Glory (Convolvulus Sepium)

Hedge Bindweed; Wild Morning Glory (Convolvulus Sepium) climbs gracefully over walls, through thickets or twines its stem tightly about those of other plants or shrubs. Its embrace is sometimes so ardent that it causes suffocation and death to the plant to which it attaches itself. The stem is smooth, rarely slightly hairy, and grows to lengths of from 3 to 10 feet.

The leaves are triangular or slightly arrow-shaped on long petioles. The large funnel-shaped blossoms grow singly on slender peduncles from the axils of the leaves. They are pink with white stripes and a flaring mouth; the calyx consists of five sepals that are concealed by two large bracts at the base. The flowers remair open only during sunshine and occas-sionally on bright moonlight nights. At the base of the corolla are five tubes leading to the supply of nectar. Only long tongued bees, butterflies or moths are able to reach the sweets, to which they are guided by the white stripes on the inside of the tube. It is very commonly found in moist ground along roadsides or the borders of woods or thickets, throughout our range and also in Europe.

Hedge Bindweed; Morning Glory. Convolvulus sepium.

Common Dodder (Cuscuta Gronovii)

Common Dodder (Cuscuta Gronovii) is a very common little parasitic plant found in moist shady thickets or among the shrubs and plants bordering ponds or streams. It germinates its seeds in the ground and the slender stem rises until it comes in contact with some living plant, when the root dies and the dodder gets its nourishment from its host by means of numerous little suckers. It has no leaves; the stem is orange and the clusters of minute bell-shaped flowers are white.