The Moonflower (Ipomoea alba) or Moonvine, is often considered a night-blooming Morning Glory since it belongs to the Morning Glory family (Convolvulaceae).
Moonflower Time-Lapse – In A Colorado Minute (Week 340) [4k]
The
colorful Morning Glory usually blooms with first light and wilts by the
afternoon. On the other hand, the Moonflower usually opens its blooms
rather rapidly in the afternoon and blooms throughout the night –
providing lovely white highlights in the dark night. I’m emphasizing the
“usually” because here in the Colorado autumn, both Morning Glory and
Moonflower mostly open their blooms in the afternoon and bloom for a
full 24 to 48 hours.
The first time, I got Moonflowers to bloom in
my yard (years ago in Brooklyn), I was actually startled and then
delighted by how quickly the bloom opens. It looks like a time-lapse in
real time. I’ve always wanted to capture this on video. Now that I
finally got some to bloom again, they’re not behaving in Colorado as I
know from other regions. So instead, I shot this 1-minute Moonflower
time-lapse video over the course of about 3 hours! The slight wind was a
bit unfortunate.
As you watch the video, you may also notice a
Morning Glory and a second Moonflower opening, yesterday’s Morning Glory
getting its purple stripes and yesterday’s Moonflower wilting… and
one busy bee!
The featured song is the instrumental version of “Branches” by Josh Woodward (JoshWoodward.com). This song is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 US License. Thank you so much, Josh!
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| Moonflower and Morning Glory blooms |
I’ll be posting a few photos of the flowers throughout this week to the In A Colorado Minute 2016 Flickr album, on Google+ and Facebook.