A Vine with Beautiful Purple Flowers

Every morning when I leave my house I'm greeted by the many flowers of a plant that covers the stone fence in my yard. It's a climbing vine called Ipomoea cairica. This plant is commonly found in tropical and subtrpical regions. Geographically it can be found in Africa, Asia, Middle East and some of the warmer countries around the Mediterranean. This vine grows very quickly and uses its long shoots to cling to almost any support. These can be trees, shrubs, fences, rocks, buildings or just about anything else.

It's leaves are relatively small and are usually divided into 5-7 lobes. The flowers are large, funnel shaped and lilac/purple in color.

Ipomoea cairica is a very hardy and undemanding plant. It tolerates heat and strong sunlight extremely well and is often seen in parks, alongg roadsides, on fences, and sometimes climbing the walls of buildings where it forms dense green "carpets" with flowers. It grows almost anywhere that provides reasonably suitable conditions for survival.

One interesting feature of this plant is that as soon as the sun begins to move toward the west and the light starts to fade, the flowers quickly close, curling into small tube-like shapes . They remain like this throughout the night and reopen with the first rays of the morning sun.