As said by its name, its flowers only open in the morning and close for the rest of the day.  This is the most commonly found species of morning glory in Malaysia.  Its scientific name is called Ipomoea Indica (light purple). 

Yes, the flower is light purple in colour (my favorite colour) and its petals are extremely thin and joined together.  Should I consider it as one petal or five petals?  It has strong life and can grow wildly over fences or climb on anything in a short time until I have to prune it quite frequently.  Of course it still blooms throughout the year no matter how I prune it.

I have never seen its seed, and it can be propagated through cutting.  It is different from the other species of morning glory in my garden – the magenta morning glory.  Their leaves shapes are also different.

I wish I can have more space in my garden where I can build a morning glory pergola.  The morning glory can climb all over the pergola.  SiewPeng and I can sit inside the pergola and look at the morning glory and listen to the bird song.  The pergola can also be the shade for some of my plants that cannot receive direct sunlight but still allow the rain water to reach the soil.  :)  I had mentioned it in Japanese Garden - the Pergola in an older post.  I doubt the magenta morning glory can climb all over the pergola, but I am confident that this light purple morning glory can.

I found out something which is true for many plants in my garden.  An ordinary variety of any plant usually can grow faster, stronger, and has more tolerance on sunlight and water.  It is usually the parents variety for cultivated variety.  For the cultivated variety, they have special colour or shape on their flowers, leaves or fruits, but usually grow slower, weaker and need more care on them to keep them alive, because they are human made variety, unless the outcome of the cultivation is to produce a fast growing variety.  Usually the varieties with green leaves are the parents variety, and the one with white / yellow spots or striped leaves are cultivated.  The above are just from my observation, more research needed to be done to confirm that it is a fact. 

There is another thing that I want to make it clear.  Species is not the same as variety.  A same species of plant can have different varieties.  Under plant categorization you will find the following order: - Kingdoms, Divisions, Classes, Orders, Families, Genus, Species, Subspecies.  The terms subspecies and variety are sometimes interchangeable.

*I wonder what will happen if I had studied botany instead of IT.
**I want to have and going to build a pergola.

This is the prettiest climber in our garden.  We bought it years ago, but now there is only a few plants left because their lives are short and the bugs and snails like to eat them.  This plant is the fifth generation if I’m not mistaken.  Each generation is less than half a year.  Luckily it produces seeds after flowering, but not all the seeds can grow.  It cannot grow very well also because of the limited space and we planted it a pot.

I guess if I plant it on the ground, each generation would have a longer life and it can climb higher.  Every time I have to collect the seeds and replant manually, otherwise it would have been extinct from our house long ago.

You can see the white colour filaments in the middle of the flower waiting for the bees or butterflies to help the pollination process.  I would like to thank all of the insects that help with this process.  I do not forget about the wind too.  It can also carry the pollen.  Without the pollinators, I would not be able to show you these pictures here.

You can see how weak they are.  They flower petal is extremely thin.  When the rain comes the flowers can drop easily.

This is how the flower buds look like.  They are hairy.  Not only the buds, but the leaves are hairy too. 

Its leaf is similar to the maple leaf.

When I touch morning glory flower, I have accidentally folded it inward.  I touch it carefully so that it won’t drop.  I try to unfold it and it works. :p

We have another type of morning glory in our garden as well.  I will show you in the next post.

Recently the water lilies in our garden show their beauties. All of them are in purple colour. The big blue bucket that can store about hundreds litters of water is their stage. They are not performing a catwalk on the stage but stand proudly above the surface of the water accompanied by their own leaves and other water plants in green colour which let the water lilies being highlighted in purple colour. Bees and butterflies are always attracted to stop by because the water lilies are sweet and have a nice scent.

If you cannot differentiate the lotus and water lily, let me tell you how to identify them. Water lily leaves lies on the surface of the water, whereas lotus leave stand in the air. Their flowers are also different. You can see pedals or stigma in the center of the water lily whereas there is a round-shaped platform with holes in the middle of lotus flower. It is called the lotus seeds head. Both of them are similar but actually different.

From my observation, this purple water lily bloom from the morning till late afternoon. The blooming time is longer than the pink water lily. I saw both of them in a park and found that the pink water lily take her break earlier than the purple water lily. The pink water lily feels shy and hides herself earlier at about noon time.

The scientific name for water lily is called Nymphaeaceae. In Chinese it is called “Shui4Lian2” or Sleeping Lotus, because the leaves are sleeping on the water. There is a type of “Shui4Lian2” has a giant size leave and allow kids to stand on it, but I have never seen a real one with my eyes. From Wikipedia, I cannot see the difference between “He2Hua1” and “Lian2Hua1” (Water lily and lotus in Chinese). They consider both names can be use for both flowers.  Maybe in different places, people address them differently.  But from my understanding “He2Hua1” means water lily and “Lian2Hua” means lotus.

I have taken these water lily pictures from different angles. First two pictures was taken using the largest aperture, however the background is still not blurred enough. That is the limitation of the lenses. I start to consider having a DSLR instead of semipro camera. The 3rd and 4th used the smallest aperture to increase the depth of field.

This last picture show that the water lily is sleeping. She lies down on the surface of the water, but she will stand up again the next morning when the sunlight is strong enough but not too hot. It’s similar to a lady, if it is too dark, she is scared, and if the sunlight is too strong, she won’t step out of the door.