Morning Glory, Heavenly Blue

Morning Glories are annual vining plants that are native to the tropical Americas. They were brought to Europe, primarily Italy and Spain, in the 1500s and were introduced into England in 1621. They were instantly unpopular in England because many gardeners thought they were a form of Bindweed, a viciously aggressive vine with nasty thorns and white flowers that closely resemble Morning Glories. It was not until the Victorian era when the invention of the ‘moveable privy’ (outhouses) became popular that Morning Glories found their place in western culture. Homeowners were desperately seeking something that would camouflage the unsightly ‘moveable privys’, and they found just what they needed with Morning Glories. The vines grow so rapidly and the leaves are so abundant that they quickly turned the unsightly privys into lush green temples. In the late 1800s, the Morning Glory varieties bloomed so early in the day, that most people grew the vines purely for their foliage and never saw their blossoms. In her classic book, Heirloom Flowers, Tovah Martin cites a quote from the 1880 Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden, “but a sight of a good ‘patch’ of these flowers in the ‘dewy morn’ is a feast for a whole day, and quite enough to tempt any lover of the beautiful to rise early to see and enjoy their glory.” The morning glories that were brought to Europe and later made their way to England were largely the red varieties. However, in the early 1600s a packet of seeds was sent to John Parkinson, a British apothecary and the botanist to King Charles I, who described the flowers produced by the plants that grew from these seeds as, “most excellent fair skie-coloured blew”. This was Heavenly Blue and the plant was known as “Heavenly Blue” from the beginning. Unfortunately, Heavenly Blue was not widely grown even though it had large, incredibly blue flowers, because the plant flowered very late in the season, but in the early 1900s an amateur gardener by the name of Clarke discovered a mutation in Colorado that was early blooming and produced abundant quantities of huge blossoms. This Heavenly Blue became known as Clarke’s Heavenly Blue and is the Heavenly Blue that is available today.