Common name : Morning glory, swamp morning glory
Common name in Bengali : Kalmi-sak
Common name in Hindi : Sarnali
Bangla English Hindi Urdu
Diagnostic characters
Biology
Ecology and distribution
Nuisance
Weed control
Botany
Uses/Remark
References
Morning glory is a terrestrial to aquatic vine, mostly perennial. The stems are hollow, rooting at the nodes and light green often with dull red-brown in places. The leaves are hastate to sagittate, with a long petiole, simple, spirally arranged and well spaced. The stems exhudates milky latex when is cutted. The flowers are big, solitary, one or two by leaf axil, with tubular shape widely opened, being white to violet in colour.
The vegetative multiplication is very important in the propagation of this species, by the stems rooting at nodes and also by stolons. Morning glory may also reproduce by seeds, mostly during the dry season when it grows on temporary flooted lands. It can then become an annual plant, when the dryness does not allow its survival.
Originating from Asia spread at present in all the tropical region of the world.
It is a weed of rice crops and the surrounding flooded places.
- Chemical
Post-emergence application of 2_4-D at 500 g/ha.
Habit
Terrestrial to aquatic vine, it is mostly perennial, triling to floating.
Roots
Taproot that becomes rapidly thick and woody in perennial plants. Adventitious roots at nodes.
Stem
Terete, hollow, glabrous and rooting at nodes. Their internal structure is spongy and fleshy. The stems exhudates milky latex when is cutted.
Leaves
The leaves are simple, long petioleted (3 to 15cm long), spirally arranged and well spaced. Blades are subcoriaceous, 4 to 10cm long and 2 to 6cm wide; their shape is variable, mostly hastate but may be also sagittate and the upper ones often lanceolate; apically acute to acuminate, with a minute mucro; base truncate to broadly cordate; margin entire or with a few irregular serrations or small lobes near the base; venation pinnate, the main nerves distinc; dark green above, lighther green underneath.
Inflorescence
Solitary flowers of big size; flowers on pedicels 2 to 7cm long; calyx 1cm long constituted by 5 fused sepals; corolla broadly funnelform, thin, tubular part light violet outside, dark violet inside, expanded part whitish, less often the entire corolla completely white; 5 midpetaline bands, thicker than the rest of the corolla, each with a minute marginal cusp. Stamens 5, free, subequal, inserted slightly above the base of and included in the corolla, pale light violet; anthers 2-locular, elliptic. Stigma consisting of 2 globose, papillose, pale light violet, adnate lobes, each 1mm diameter, higher than the longest stamen.
Fruit
Capsule ovoid to globose, 8 to 12mm diameter; each capsule contains 4 seeds.
Seeds
Brown and densely pilose, convex with the dorsal part rounded and the others flat, 7 to 8mm long and 4 to 5mm wide.
Seedling
The cotyledons are remarquable, with a bilobed lamina en V shape, 4cm long and 8mm wide, petiolated. The first leaves are simple, alternate arranged, triangular in shape, slightly hastate and with a long petiole.
The young leaves and stalks are consumed raw as vegetable or cooked in various preparations. The old leaves are used to feed the pigs.
- Grard P., Le Bourgeois T., Merlier H. 1996. Adventrop - Doc V.1.1. Les adventices d’Afrique soudano-sahélienne. CD-Rom, Cirad-Ca. Montpellier, France.
- Radanachaless T., Maxwell J. F. 1994. Weeds of soybean fields in Thailand. Multiple Cropping Center Publications. Thailand.
- Dassanayake M. D., Fosberg F. R. 1981. A revised handbook of the Flora of Ceylan. Vol. I.
Sponsored jointly by the University of Peradeniya, Department of Agriculture, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. Rotterdam, A. A. Balkema.
- Phon P. 2000. Dictionnaire des plantes utilisées au Cambodge. Olympic, Khan Chamcar Mon, Phnom Penh.
Top of the page