Birth flower
Morning glory
Ipomoea. In the language of flowers, as lists print it today, it stands for affection. Kate Greenaway's dictionary of 1884 gives it another: “Affectation”. It is a custom of sentiment, not a scientific or official designation.
- Latin name
- Ipomoea
- Month
- September
- Meaning today
- affectionNot the reading of 1884: Kate Greenaway gives “Affectation”.
The plant itself
Ipomoea is a genus. The figures below are for one species of it, Ipomoea purpurea, the common morning glory.
| Family | Convolvulaceae |
|---|---|
| Native to | tropical and subtropical America |
| Habit | climber, short-lived and usually grown as an annual |
| Height | up to about 5 m |
| Flowers | summer into early autumn |
Where a morning glory carries lysergic-acid alkaloids, as Ipomoea tricolor does, they are made not by the plant but by a fungus of the genus Periglandula that lives on it and is passed on in the seed. The one living in Ipomoea tricolor was only described, as Periglandula clandestina, in 2025.
Where the names come from
The name is recorded from 1814, for the twining plant whose colourful trumpet-shaped flowers open only in the early morning. The genus name, Ipomoea, is made from the Greek ips, a worm that bores into wood and horn, and homoios, resembling: a worm-like plant, perhaps for the way its stems twine. The species name, purpurea, is Latin for purple.
Where the meaning is written down
- As the dictionary prints it
- AffectationUnder the heading “Morning Glory” in Kate Greenaway, Language of Flowers, 1884.
- As lists print it today
- AffectionA different reading from the entry quoted here; the note below says where it differs.
Greenaway and Ingram's Flora Symbolica (1869) both give "affectation" for the morning glory, and both carry separate entries for convolvulus and bindweed. The modern "affection" is a different word, not today's wording of the same one; whether it began as a misreading of "affectation" is not recorded.
Is it poisonous?
The ASPCA lists Ipomoea species as toxic to dogs, cats and horses: they contain indole alkaloids of the lysergic acid group, which cause vomiting, and large amounts of seed can cause hallucinations. The RHS rates the common morning glory harmful if eaten, for people and for pets. The alkaloids are not confined to the seeds: in seedlings of Ipomoea tricolor they were found in abundance in the roots, stems and leaves.
Each finding above names who made it: the ASPCA's poisonous plant database, the Royal Horticultural Society's harm ratings, or a published report. This is general information and not veterinary advice — if an animal or a person has eaten part of a plant, ring a vet or a poison line rather than reading a website.