For more than ten years now, I’ve grown this wonderful vine from the morning glory family in a pot on my front patio. It’s sometimes known as cypress vine or hummingbird vine, but these common names are so interchangeable that if you want to order seed, it’s best to look for the Latin name: Ipomoea quamoclit.

I fell in love with this adorable climber the first time I saw it in someone’s garden, and immediately asked if I could collect some of the seeds. The feathery fern-like foliage would be stunning on its own, even without the tiny, tubular red flowers that flare out into a five-pointed star. I just love the texture of this plant!

Like most morning glories, this vine is easy to grow. I sowed seeds only once and it’s reseeded itself every year since then. Because I grow it in a container on a metal obelisk, the growth is very restrained, but I’ve seen this vine grow to 20 feet tall against a utility pole on a public street corner – just spectacular!

Did I mention the red flowers attract hummingbirds? They don’t spend long on individual flowers, which probably only provide a sip of nectar, but once the vine really gets going it’s covered with enough flowers to provide a feast.

The vine has one minor drawback – like most morning glories, the flowers last only a day, opening just after dawn and closing up by early afternoon.

For those of you who like a more dramatic display, I recommend a morning glory named ‘Heavenly Blue’, which was hybridized from the wild morning glory (Ipomoea tricolor) to bear bigger, more dramatic flowers. A friend of mine grew this on a pierced brick wall last summer and sent me this picture. Another friend used to grow ‘Heavenly Blue’ on a lamppost in her front yard. She’d create a lush pyramid of vines by driving several stakes into the ground around the base of the post, then stringing twine from the stakes to the top of the lamppost. After starting seeds indoors, she’d transplant the seedlings into the ground next to the stakes, coaxing them up the twine as they grew.

Want to extend the flowery display into the evening hours? Many gardeners in the South, where I live, plant ‘Heavenly Blue’ along with moon vine (Ipomoea alba), mixing the two vines on the same trellis or support. Moon vine is kind of a reverse morning glory – its huge, fragrant, white flowers open at twilight and stay open all night. So when you plant these two related vines together, you get 24 hours of bloom, with a color change in the middle!

Planting tip:

Morning glory seeds have a thick seed coat that can cause them to be slow to germinate. You can speed up the process either by soaking them in water overnight or nicking them slightly with a utility knife (some people use a metal nail file to lightly scratch the seed coat).