98 IPOMCEA LACUNOSA. WHITE STAR IPOMCEA. 



long it has been known. It must have been one of the first if 

 our native flowers that were introduced into English gardens, as 

 it occurs in some catalogues of the year 1640, and is mentioned 

 by Ray, a botanical writer of the end of the seventeenth century. 



The distinction between IpOTUoea and Convolvulus is to be 

 found i^rincipally in the stigmas; for while the former has one 

 capitate stigma, usually two-lobed, the latter has two stigmas, 

 which are linear. Our species, Ipomoea lacunosa, is easily known 

 from all the other small-flowered American species by its short- 

 tubed corolla, and by the jDedicels of its flowers, which are much 

 shorter than the leaves. 



The whole family of ConvolvzilacecB is noted for its flowers, 

 which usually exjDand their corollas during the morning, or only 

 in fair weather. The first of these facts is, indeed, so well 

 known, that many of the. species are popularly called " Morning 

 Glories"; and the second, the closing of the flowers at the 

 approach of rain, was looked upon, in the early days of modern 

 teleology, as a delicate contrivance for the protection of the 

 stamens, and consequently of the pollen. Some modern physi- 

 ologists, however, believe that plants with fully developed flowers, 

 such as those of the Coiivolvulacas, have an abhorrence of per- 

 petual close-breeding or self-fertilization, and if this be true, it 

 miorht almost seem as if such flowers, not carino- for their own 

 pollen, would hardly take any special trouble to preserve it, and 

 would rather prefer to keep their corollas open at all times, so as 

 to lose no possible chance of receiving polleil from other flowers. 

 Our Ipomce.i lacunosa, indeed, appears to act on this idea, for, 

 according to the writer's own observation, its flowers do not open 

 in the morning only, nor do they close at the approach of rain. 

 The species Is not common In Pennsylvania, and a specimen 

 in flower there Is certain to attract the attention of a botanist. 

 The writer of this had to pass regularly once a week, about noon, 

 by a hedge where a number of the plants were growing ; but he 

 never noticed any open flowers, until one day, very late In the 

 fall, he happened to pass by the spot In a rain-storm. Our 



