Climbing on another climber
Click for greater clarity.
On June 19th I found this scene at a corner of Great Hills Park in my Austin neighborhood. Prominent in the foreground are three flowers of a perennial vine called purple bindweed, Ipomoea cordatotriloba. The ‘three lobes’ mentioned in the latter part of the species name refer to the plant’s leaves, some of which you can see in an arc across the upper two-thirds of the photograph. The curved light-green stem that the leaves follow is from a different climbing vine, Clematis drummondii, whose pale flowers far outnumber the bindweed’s more colorful ones. In the upper left you can see the darker stem of the bindweed twining around that of the Clematis.
To find out the places in the southeastern United States where purple bindweed grows, you can consult the state-clickable map at the USDA website. Clematis drummondii grows primarily in Texas. Both of these species were unfazed during last year’s drought and both are doing well again this year, as they always seem to.
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Posted on this date a year ago: a closeup of an opening camphorweed bud that reminded me of a torch.
© 2012 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
That was a very good photo of these flowers and plants.
bentehaarstad
July 11, 2012 at 7:03 AM
Thanks, Bente. Both of these species are hardy and thrive in the Texas heat and sun; both were abundant during last year’s drought.
Steve Schwartzman
July 11, 2012 at 7:18 AM
Nice images on your site, Steve. I couldn’t do this blog in Colorado – except in the summer months. We have a fairly short wildflower season here (in the mountains, at any rate…).
John - Visual Notebook
July 11, 2012 at 9:28 AM
There are more wildflowers at the moment in some northern climes than in Texas (I just came back from the Northeast, where that was the case), but overall Texas offers at least some wildflowers in every month, including those frigid months where nothing flourishes up north.
Steve Schwartzman
July 11, 2012 at 9:39 AM
Gracias por visitar mi blog, Steve, y permitirme descubrir el tuyo. Tiene unas fotos de Naturaleza impresionantes. Te sigo a partir de ahora.
Y sobre los edificios antiguos de Mallorca, te dejo un enlace al mismo pueblo de las balas de paja pero del interior y sus edificios, muchos de ellos centenarios: http://dotdos.net/2012/05/22/un-paseo-por-sineu/
Un saludo, José Manuel
dotdos
July 11, 2012 at 9:39 AM
Gracias por el enlace a las fotos de Sineu. No sé si pasé por ese pueblo, pero recuerdo bien las tres semanas que pasé en la Porciúncula en 1985 y el paseo que hicimos a Valldemossa para visitar la casa donde habitaron Chopin y George Sand. ¡Tiempos que fueron!
Steve Schwartzman
July 11, 2012 at 10:02 AM
Debió ser un viaje fascinante. Valldemossa es uno de los pueblos más bonitos de Mallorca. He publicado algunas cosas sobre él y la anécdota de Chopin atrae a muchas personas interesadas.
dotdos
July 11, 2012 at 1:47 PM
[…] days before I made the wide view in yesterday’s post that showed many flowers of Clematis drummondii, I did a closeup of a more advanced stage in the development of that species. It reminded of these […]
Sleek « Portraits of Wildflowers
July 12, 2012 at 6:08 AM
I just bumped into purple bindweed yesterday, climbing over some neglected wax leaf ligustrum at the back of a parking lot. It’s such a pretty and hardy flower – a reminder of the morning glories my grandmother grew on her trellis.
shoreacres
July 12, 2012 at 9:24 AM
Hardy is just the right word for purple bindweed. I saw lots of it all through the worst of last year’s drought. As for ligustrum, you may not know that some native plant people refer to that alien and invasive tree as disgustrum; the same people would be rooting for the bindweed to smother the tree.
Steve Schwartzman
July 12, 2012 at 9:37 AM
The Clematis looks a lot like the one we have here, Clematis ligusticifolia.
montucky
July 13, 2012 at 12:12 AM
I’m glad you’ve got one to enjoy in Montana. I hadn’t heard of that species, but I looked it up on the website of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
Steve Schwartzman
July 13, 2012 at 6:28 AM
[…] posts ago you saw three fresh flowers of purple bindweed, a species that as a dutiful member of the morning-glory family usually opens its flowers in the […]
Purple bindweed flower on the wane « Portraits of Wildflowers
July 13, 2012 at 6:04 AM
[…] In the last post, the patches of color in the background were from this species. Now there are patches of a different color in the background, this time from purple bindweed, Ipomoea cordatotriloba, another wildflower that we’ve seen before. […]
What did the dew do too to camphorweed? « Portraits of Wildflowers
October 5, 2012 at 6:14 AM
I’m a great admirer of ipomoeas, it statrted with the i. violacea 3 years ago:
http://www.goldenline.pl/forum/446442/poezja-i-fotografia/s/2#21874842
Other species, the more common ones, return frequently in my photographs.
Andrzej Dąbrówka
October 16, 2012 at 11:09 AM
I just looked it up, and I see that the genus Ipomoea is much more widespread than I realized, with many species in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. I can see why you’re attracted to them.
Steve Schwartzman
October 16, 2012 at 1:49 PM
[…] flower and the bits of spiderweb. The pink in the background is from our seemingly ubiquitous purple bindweed, Ipomoea […]
Mealy blue sage and friends « Portraits of Wildflowers
November 17, 2012 at 6:15 AM