This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s a wiry, weedy, winding vine, Tievine (Ipomoea cordatotriloba).
Tievine is a native species of Morning-Glory found throughout the Lowcountry. It prefers open, sunny, disturbed habitats, like roadside, fence rows, wood lines, and old fields. It’s an annual herbaceous vine with fine twining lines of stems that grow up and over grasses, shrubs, and fences. Although thin, its stems are remarkably tough. It tolerates a wide array of soil fertilities and can become rather aggressive on moist, fertile soils. If you have a volunteer Morning-Glory coming up in a flower pot or garden bed in the Lowcountry, more often than not it’s a Tievine. Tievine’s leaves are a little less than palm-sized, are heart-shaped, and often three-lobed. Its peak bloom time begins in September and continues well into October. Tievine flowers are an inch-and-a-half wide trumpet that’s either round or a pentagon when viewed from the front. They’re a soft pink on the outside of the petals which funnels down into a deep magenta center. Flowers open one at a time at each node and each only lasts for a day, often closing by the time the midday day heat arrives. Tievine and other Morning-Glories are decent nectar plants for Hummingbirds, bees, and larger butterflies. It also helps create cover for mammals and birds in fields and other open areas, by growing like a net cast over nearby shrubs and structures.
