I hate morning glory.
It's a desperate outlaw weed and should be dispensed with entirely. Seeing morning glory seeds in the stores drives me crazy. Even the shape of the leaves is enough to make me go into an orgy of digging and weed pulling. The other weeds suffer from this mania by association. Poor things.
Morning glory covers a huge range of plants, and there are a number of cultivars that are considered annuals. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that if a cultivar (i.e., a hybrid) goes to seed the baby plants will revert to the parents of the hybrid. So a morning glory that goes to seed will go back to weed status. Those seeds that aren't strong enough for their new climate don't survive the winter.
People wonder where the strangling vines come from that attack their plants and come back every year? Well, it was the morning glory they planted last spring.
Morning glory is a perrenial weed that can't stand to have anything else alive in this world. It digs its tap roots six feet underground and spreads from that point, so roads and hedges are useless as barriers. It twists around everything it gets close to and strangles whole trees if it's allowed to spread. It holds first place (in my head) for the original devil weed.
Apparently the seeds are laxative, but I can't see that this is sufficient positive to out-weigh the strangling nuisance factor. We have lots of herbal laxitives. Some morning glories are edible, ditto. Wikipedia says "In the USA it is a Federal Noxious Weed, and technically it's illegal to grow, import, possess, or sell." Yay! Now if they would only enforce that...The USDA Noxious Weed website lists its range as California and Florida. Then they go ahead to say that it's a noxious, invasive weed in about 30 states. Duh.
I guess in an odd way I admire it, though. It's sure persistent.
Armed with shovel and gloves, I now go to do battle with the pernicious devil weed.
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