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Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
from the November 20, 2011 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins; limestone bedrock; elevation ~39m (~128ft), N20.675°, W88.569°; central Yucatán state, MÉXICO
LITTLE BELL MORNING-GLORY
It's the peak of morning-glory blossoming season now; weedy roadsides are riotously colorful with them, and there are so many species. We've already looked at eleven Yucatec species and it's easy to find new ones. For example, this week one turned up looking very much like North America's common, weedy, Ivy-leafed Morning-glory, but it was much smaller, as shown above.
A longitudinal section of a flower showing the blossom's different-length stamens and the style's spherical or "globular" stigma head, as well as bristly segmented hairs covering the calyx base, is shown below:
This is IPOMOEA TRILOBA, sometimes called Little Bell in English, though it has lots of names in many languages. This native of the Caribbean now is an invasive weed of roadsides and fields throughout the world's tropics. The flowers and leaves in the picture are smaller than usual, maybe because it was growing in such impoverished roadside dirt.