Skip to main content

Service Notice

The Western Australian Herbarium’s collections management system and census were set to read-only mode on 1 October 2025. Taxonomic updates published since this time are not being reflected in Florabase, herbarium collections, or Western Australia’s taxonomic names census (Nomos). Conservation listings displayed on Florabase may also be out of date. Please refer to DBCA’s Threatened species and communities webpage for the most recent Threatened and Priority Flora List, noting that recent taxonomic updates are similarly not included. Our database migration is moving to a staging phase. We thank you for your patience as we ensure the integrity of our biodiversity data, develop new workflows, and train staff to use the new systems. Please reach out to us if you have any questions or concerns.

The notice period started at 12:00 pm on Wednesday, 1 October 2025 +08:00 and will end at 12:00 pm on Friday, 1 January 2027 +08:00.

Advanced Search

Ipomoea L.

Reference
Sp.Pl. [Linnaeus] 2:159 (1753)
Name Status
Current
Image

Scientific Description

Common name. Morning Glories. Family Convolvulaceae.

Habit and leaf form. Herbs, or herbaceous climbers, or shrubs, or lianas; evergreen, or deciduous; laticiferous, or non-laticiferous and without coloured juice. Autotrophic. Herbs annual, or perennial; plants with neither basal nor terminal concentrations of leaves. Stem internodes solid, or hollow. Trailing or climbing, or self supporting; stem twiners. Twining anticlockwise. Hydrophytic, helophytic, mesophytic, and xerophytic; free floating, or rooted. Leaves alternate; spiral; petiolate to subsessile; non-sheathing; simple, or compound. Leaf blades dissected, or entire (entire to deeply lobed); when dissected, pinnatifid, or palmately lobed; pinnately veined, or palmately veined; cross-venulate; cordate, or hastate, or sagittate. Leaves without stipules (sometimes with pseudo-stipules); without a persistent basal meristem. Leaf anatomy. Hairs present (hairs simple or bifurcate), or absent. Stem anatomy. Nodes unilacunar. Secondary thickening anomalous, or developing from a conventional cambial ring; via concentric cambia, or from a single cambial ring.

Reproductive type, pollination. Fertile flowers hermaphrodite. Unisexual flowers absent. Plants hermaphrodite.

Inflorescence and flower features. Flowers solitary, or aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; when solitary, axillary. Inflorescence few-flowered to many-flowered. Flowers in cymes, or in heads (rarely). The terminal inflorescence unit cymose. Inflorescences axillary; with involucral bracts (when inflorescence capitate), or without involucral bracts (usually). Flowers bracteate; bi- bracteolate; small to large; regular to somewhat irregular. The floral asymmetry (when noticeable) involving the perianth (K only). Flowers 5 merous; cyclic; tetracyclic. Free hypanthium absent. Hypogynous disk present, or absent (rarely); annular. Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla; 10; 2 -whorled; isomerous. Calyx 5; 1 -whorled; polysepalous; hairy, or glabrous; imbricate; regular, or unequal but not bilabiate; persistent; accrescent, or non-accrescent; with the median member posterior. Corolla 5; 1 -whorled; gamopetalous; entire, or lobed. Corolla lobes markedly shorter than the tube. Corolla plicate; funnel-shaped (or salverform); regular; hairy abaxially (on mid-petaline bands), or glabrous abaxially; pink, or purple, or red, or blue, or white, or yellow. Androecium 5. Androecial members adnate (to the corolla); more or less all equal, or markedly unequal (usually); free of one another; 1 -whorled. Androecium exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 5. Staminal insertion near the base of the corolla tube. Stamens remaining included (usually), or becoming exserted; oppositisepalous. Filaments filiform, often dilated at the base. Anthers straight (when dehisced); dehiscing via longitudinal slits; introrse; tetrasporangiate. Pollen grains spinulose. Gynoecium 2(–5) carpelled. The pistil 2(–5) celled. Gynoecium syncarpous; eu-syncarpous; superior. Ovary plurilocular; 2(–5) locular. Gynoecium median. Styles 1; simple (filiform); apical; not becoming exserted (usually), or becoming exserted. Stigmas 1; 1 - lobed (then undulate), or 2(–3) - lobed; dry type; papillate (the papillae villiform); Group II type. Placentation basal. Ovules 2 per locule; ascending; apotropous; non-arillate; anatropous.

Fruit and seed features. Fruit non-fleshy; dehiscent, or indehiscent (rarely); a capsule, or capsular-indehiscent (rarely). Capsules loculicidal (from the summit via 4–6 valves), or splitting irregularly (rarely). Fruit 2–4 locular; 4–6 seeded (or fewer by abortion). Seeds trigonous; endospermic. Endosperm oily. Seeds conspicuously hairy, or not conspicuously hairy. Cotyledons 2. Embryo chlorophyllous; straight, or curved. Seedling. Germination phanerocotylar.

Physiology, biochemistry. Aluminium accumulation not found. Photosynthetic pathway: C3.

Geography, cytology, number of species. Native of Australia. Not endemic to Australia. Australian states and territories: Western Australia, South Australia, Northern Territory, Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria. Northern Botanical Province, Eremaean Botanical Province, and South-West Botanical Province.

Additional characters Pollen grains foraminate (pantoporate). Stigmas the stigmatic area globose (capitate or biglobular).

Etymology. From the Greek ips, ipos (a type of worm) and "resembling"; ips was formerly thought to mean Convolvulus, to which this genus is closely allied.