Doubtless the hairs on the base of the filaments,
between which certain bumblebees and other long-tongued
benefactors can easily penetrate to suck the nectar secreted in a
fleshy disk below, act as a stockade to little would-be
pilferers. The color in the throat serves as a pathfinder to the
deep-hidden sweets. How pleasant the way is made for such insects
as a flower must needs encourage! For these the perennial wild
potato vine keeps open house far later in the day than its annual
relatives. Professor Robertson says it is dependent mainly upon
two bees, Entechnia taurea and Xenoglossa ipomoeae, the latter
its namesake.
One has to dig deep to find the huge, fleshy, potato-like root
from which the vine derived its name of man-of-the-earth. Such a
storehouse of juices is surely necessary in the dry soil where
the wild potato lives.
Happily, the COMMON MORNING-GLORY (I. purpurea) - the
Convolvulus major of seedsmen's catalogues - has so commonly
escaped from cultivation in the eastern half of the United States
and Canada as now to deserve counting among our wild flowers,
albeit South America is its true home.
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