The pure white trumpets of hedge bindweed Calystegia sepium are a welcome sight in hedgerows or on urban waste ground in late summer, but it's certainly not a plant you'd want to introduce into a garden, where it will curl around and strangle anything it can reach. It has invaded our garden and its white, brittle, deeply buried rhizomes have proved just about impossible to eradicate. They regenerate from the smallest fragment.
...... but if I didn't know better I might almost be tempted to cultivate this pink-striped form.
I know of a couple of places where this grows wild, on the edge of a reed bed near Alnmouth and in a hedge near Sunderland Bridge just outside Durham, so given its invasive tendencies I'll just visit and admire it occasionally, rather than grow it.
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Never seen the pink variety before Phil. It's a beauty.
ReplyDeleteA beautiful flower and it looks good when it closes up.
ReplyDeleteIt looks so similar with the Ipomoea species (not the cultivated I batatas), even the shape of the leaves are the same and the habit and invasiveness! I am thinking of the Ipomoea pes-caprae which is the only plant growing lushly at the sandy beach in Dubai, as well as our shores.
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