moonflower with short internodes

[kathleen keeler]

Henry Broekhuyse (broekh at unixg.ubc.ca) wrote:

: I have a "moonflower" plant (about 2-3 months old) that is growing as bush
: and not a vine. I grew this plant from a seed - another plant from the same
: batch of seeds, planted at the same time, has grown into a climbing vine. 
: Could anyone tell me the Latin binomial for this plant, and if this kind of
: variation is common for this species?

There are probably several other species that are "moonflowers" but 
one group are _Ipomoea_ species, that is, night blooming 
morningglories.  (_Ipomoea alba_ _I. turbinata_, and at least 6 or 
7 others). Many of these are sturdy enough plants to be self-supporting 
for a while (=bushes), though basically they are climbers.  Is your bush in 
full sunlight?  With _Ipomoea_ you should be able to induce climbing by
giving it something to climb or a pattern of shadows to which to 
respond (that is, a bright spot to climb toward).

Kathy Keeler
kkeeler at unlinfo.unl.edu