Time: A year later than then.
Place: The same west-end parking lot as then.
Result: More or less the same as then: a fine reflection in the car’s side mirror, and a chain-link fence still trending to horizontal.
But wait, what’s this? Something new. Not a new thing (when I check last year’s post, I see that the vine was flowering in October last year, too) but a new realization. Two, in fact.
First, my tentative identification of this vine as hollyhock last year was just wrong. This year I thought to check with Google Lens, which offered me several possibilities, from which I have selected Calystegia sepium. Like me, you’re probably wondering how it’s distinguished from Calystegia silvatica.
Calystegia sepium and C. macounii have a clear V- or U-shape
to the base of the leaf blade where the petiole attaches
and in C. silvatica the blade base is quadrate.
– SW Biodiversity
It also goes by Hedge Bindweed, which is easier to spell, pronounce, and remember. It goes by Hedge False Bindweed, too, for no immediately obvious reason: The ways of plantologists are, if not actually strange, then at least poorly explained.
Second, as we enter Thanksgiving weekend and this last quarter of the year, can overnight frosts be far behind? No, they cannot, and the vine, being neither a dummy nor a false dummy, is yellowing many of its leaves in clear recognition of this fact. Yet at the same time it is not just flowering, but also setting new buds, simultaneously winding down some bits of itself, glorying in others, and optimistically launching more.
On an actual nature walk late in the year like this, I’ve seen plants that shut down their activities, all tidy like, in apparent anticipation of the coming winter, and I’ve seen others that go full-speed-ahead into the brick wall. As I enter this last quarter-or-so of my potential span, this nature walk in a parking lot offers me a third way. I can model myself after the Hedge Bindweed: giving up some things in gracious acceptance of the inevitable, continuing to enjoy the things where I am at or near my full strength, and fearlessly launching new initiatives that I can’t possibly finish before the snows come.
Lovely meditation on the bindweed! I’m in its camp, to the derision of some and the cheers of others. I remember Mary Oliver’s poem on prayer from your blog last week. It seems that waste spaces can be just as inspiring as a lush garden.
Laurna – 🙂 We all make our own choices as to how we’re going to be in the world. There are lots of perfectly good choices. The only thing I’d say is that I find it helpful to realize that there are other choices than the one(s) I’m inclined to make by default.
Bindweed is humble – and beautiful. I have seen it in climates as varied as Great Britain to the Caribbean. Its purple variation is particularly attractive.
Judith – Wow, that’s quite a range! Here’s a short video on bindweed, proving yet again that everything is on YouTube. 🙂
Isabel – I too have seen that same leaning chain-link fence.
BTW: The flower we called ‘hollyhock’ that grew on one side of the farmhouse when I was growing up was nothing like a vine. It was basically a single straight stem growing to a height of 3 to 5 feet with leaves and blooms growing out off of that stem. I never checked the blosooms closely as it wasn’t a particularly pretty plant IMHO.
John – Good point about the habit of growth of hollyhocks.
Looks like Morning Glory to me. I planted some years ago and now nothing else is allowed to grow in that planter: the Morning Glory roots under the soil strangle it (thus, bind weed). Some years, they even kill each other. Is there a lesson it that?
But I do like your “meditation” as Laura calls it on aging. I want to close down “all tidy like” (as you put it) — no lingering, thank you very much. John says he wants to die of a heart attack and be dead before he hits the floor. He does have a way with words!
Barbara – It looks like morning glory to me, too. And to others also, as you can see here: And the hard-to-manage weeds called bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis) and hedge bindweed (Calystegia sepium) share the common name of “morning glory,” but are very different plants. As for John, I think a lot of us would take a quick exit, given any choice in the matter.