Hallucinogens are back again!

Here is one of the first two Ipomoea Purpurea, or Morning Glory, flowers that appeared in our garden this morning.

I thought that the first flowers would be late this year, because the vines have only really got climbing in the past couple of weeks. But, lo and behold!, glowing in the sun this morning were the flowers, low down on the stems.

It was only at the end of June that I commented on Gerda's photograph of a Morning Glory in a Rotterdam garden to say I believed that ours were going to be late this year. But they aren't very much later after all.

I have followed the temporal behaviour of our Morning Glories over several years, and offered Blipfoto entries for 2010 26 September, when the plants had really only just got going properly, and for 2011 1 July, when they were much earlier. In 2009, the flowering of almost all the plants was finished by the end of August after a spectacular (early) season.

As for the hallucinogenic properties (of the seeds), I gave links in my submissions for 2010 and 2011, Interesting links are

The Ipomoea entry from Wikipedia

and

Hallucinogenic Plants - Morning Glory

As Gerda, and some of her commenters, remarked, light seems to shine from the centre of the blooms, as in my 2010 and 2011 photographs. I think that is a result of the contrast between the white and the marvellous dark blue/purple of the outer parts of the petals, rather than the transfer of hallucinogenic vapours. Because the sun was not falling head-on to the bloom today, the effect is less pronounced this time.