This is a interesting plant that I have seen a few times on my October visits to southern Illinois. This twining or climbing vine has distinctive three-lobed leaves and large, showy purple-to-blue or white flowers.
It is most often found in disturbed low areas, roadsides, cultivated fields and ditches. Ivy-leaf Morning Glory prefers soil that is soggy or marshy. This plant is native of tropical America, but has been introduced to various parts of the United States.
Ivy-leaf Morning Glory’s flowers have five long, slender, hairy sepals and are tubular, funnel-shaped and up to two inches wide. Most morning glory flowers curl up and close during the warm parts of the day, and are fully open in the morning – thus their name.
The leaves are green, hairy and are usually three-lobed, but they may also be five-lobed or heart-shaped. The stems are green, slender, hairy, and twining.
This plant is also known as Woolly Morning Glory, Mexican Morning Glory and Entireleaf Morning Glory. It was neat to see this pale blue flower while out and about in the Land of Lincoln.