PlantFiles: Lavender Moonvine
Ipomoea muricata

Hello! I am from Kerala, India and there - if I am not mistaken - we use the fruit part of this plant as a vegetable. We use them when it is tender and it has a green stem with white colored bulb at the end. I purchased some flower seeds (morning glory and others) from summer hill seeds and they sent me this as a gift! Boy was I in for a surprise when I saw the seeds! I have longed for this plant and I was checking this site for this plant. Anyway in India, we call this clove beans as it is a bigger form of a clove. I am going to plant this and see how it turns out! So far the search on the Internet and the pics from this site has helped almost confirm that this is the same clove beans we have in India. I am not going to ask anyone who has this plant to confirm by cooking it or anything as this site lists it as poisonous.

Pretty! I look forward to any volunteer seedlings coming up.I did not make the mistake of planting it in an area where it would become a problem. Also any morning glory planted in a pot on a porch will be a "spider mite magnet".

This plant (Ipomoea muricata) is also known as clove bean, and it is a vegetable in India and surrounding regions. This is not sold in grocery stores but people grow it in their garden, and is supposed to be a very healthy vegetable and cooked as stir fries, made similar to eggplants or okkra. Here's a link to learn more about this vegetable.
http://opaals.iitk.ac.in:9000/wordpress/index.php/clove-bean...

I am confused about this being listed as poisonous here. Please clarify. Thank you.

Non-invasive here on Long Island, NY (zone 7b) - but I can understand why this is a pest in warmer parts of the country! On hot days it seems to double in length. I only grow it in pots but it has managed to re-seed for several years now. Nice flowers.

I'm so glad I got to try this one. I planted one plant with 2 white moonvines at the bottom of my front porch railing. The flowers are small, but pretty. Also, there is no scent to them, which was a bit of a disappointment to me, but the color is very pretty. Seeds are black (or at least a very dark brown), and look like small coffee beans when completely dried. If you plant these with the white ones, at least it's easy to tell the two apart when you collect them! Easy to start, easy to grow and would recommend to anyone who loves lavender!

Update 8/31/08: I have had these for 2 seasons now- I am getting TONS of seeds and will be willing to share. I'm still disappointed that there's no scent to them, but the color is so pretty that I'm beginning not to mind so much.

A friend sent me a packet of seeds from her garden last year. She knew I was after moonflower vines. Oops, she got her seeds mixed up.

My first four blooms just opened this afternoon and they're Ipomoea turbinata, not the regular white moonflowers. Luckily, I planted some *real* white moonflowers at the end of the patio, from a seed packet I bought at the store. But darn it, I wanted white ones where I sit at night.

Anyway, the seeds look just like moonflower seeds, and nicking & soaking them overnight will result in their plumping up and almost doubling in size. Then they're ready to plant. I started these seeds the first or second week of May, and the first flowers just opened today, July 19. The germination times can vary quite a bit though. Most came up the first week, some a few weeks later, and one just came up the other day.

I was wondering what the little thorns all over the stems were for. They're too soft for protection. Then I noticed one of these I'd planted at the base of a tree and those soft "thorns" are perfect for helping the vine get a grip on a tree trunk which is too thick for it to quickly wind itself around.

Well, that's my theory anyway.

This vine gets huge, not a lot of flowers at one time, but reseeds everywhere and is a spider mite magnet.

The USDA has this plant listed as a noxious weed for the following states. It's even prohibited in Arizona.

Very fast growing vine with profuse blooms. Does best in my area in partial shade, but will grow in full sun. My vines got easily 15' long! Lots of seed pods and easy to harvest! Beautiful flowers that look more like a light or dusky pink or perhaps lilac color. The hawkmoths LOVED them!

A really nice shade of "pink" I have found, moreso than purple. I also grow Ipomoea turbinata (lavender moonvine) and it is definitely more of a purple than this one. This one is growing up 25 plus feet this year at my place. Seedpods are enormous and many. Seeds are black!

I have not grown this plant, but in "Flowers" by Pizzetti and Cocker (1968), a "purplish" moonflower, "...not more than 3" in diameter...", is mentioned, called Calonyction muricatum. In Hortus III (1976), the name has changed to Ipomoea muricata. From the image in this database, it looks like the purple changes to a bluish pink as it ages.

As to origin of I. muricata, Hortus III says, "Probably native to American tropics; now escaped from cultivation in the tropics of both hemispheres."

A rather fast grower, vines up to around 8 feet. Does not do alot of spreading, flowers beautiful lavender in color with a little shade given, however, in full sun, the color of the bloom leans more toward a washed out pink color. Blooms last all day on an overcast day, usually blooming near evening and gone by mid morning, unless like I said, a cloudy or overcast day where they will remain open all day long.

This vine has reseeded itself for me for 5 years. With each succeeding year, it has climbed further. At the end of Sept 2003, it had reached past my second floor windows- (I draped kite string out the top of my second floor windows to the ground).** Note**- I find the more you neglect this vine, the more blooms.Fertilizing gives vigorous foliage growth.
If left to reseed itself, be diligent about removing stray vines, they WILL take over.