It happens every year, about this time: the Morning Glories (aka MGs) show all their colors. There are at least four combinations:
Deep cobalt blue
A soft yet vivid pink;
Light blue with white spokes and touches of gray; and
A very light pink.
I used to be entranced & mystified by them. Since we never planted them, we don‘t know what variety they are or how they got here, but we’re pretty sure they’re all the same kind — DNA-wise, like “Heavenly Blue,” and “Pearly Gates” (white).
Those were the the two types that were said, in a Playboy Magazine issue I read in 1963, to contain a kind of LSD. (Really, I only looked in it it for the hallucinogenic recipes; and for the interview with famed LSD-maven, Timothy Leary. His conversation with Playboy is here, full text.)
I chewed a few packets of them in 1964, to see if that was true, and if they would, you know, let me talk to God.
It was true: At least the hallucinogenic trip part; I tripped for several hours, til I barfed up their remains. But God didn’t drop by to chat, and the seed store ignored my request for a partial refund. Nowadays the seeds are treated as being poisonous for humans to eat, and I can see why.
I haven’t chewed on any of the ones here In The Yard, though. Partly it’s age. But mainly because my working assumption is that these plants were dropped from a UFO , aiming to hunt down the secret army bases in the region, and paralyze them in an impenetrable mass of tangled tendrils and creepy creepers. (They would have done it, too, except that kudzu got there first; so they took cover next to my place and are awaiting further orders.)
Somewhere I read that the fact of various colors of blooms on a single plant is a biochemical things rather than genetic;
I suppose that explains it, but it’s still weird.
They stick round til it gets good and cold. Then we rip up as much of it as we can. But they’ll be back.