Purple Bindweed aka Wild Morning Glory aka Tievine (Ipomoea cordatotriloba) is a volunteer plant that grows very well here. It’s a drought-tolerant vine that would clamber its way through the whole garden if I let it. However, I limit its range to the wildflower meadow in front of the house and one section of the back garden. This is the latter.
Purple Bindweed is very popular with the bigger bees, such as bumblebees and carpenter bees. Almost without fail, if I am outside and it’s sunny, then there will be dozens of bees popping in and out of the flowers with just their back ends sticking out (see first photo above).
Here’s one sequence of photos where a bee was going from flower to flower, spending about a second in each. Look for the blooms with black dots in the middle!
The area in the back garden where bindweed is “allowed” is the wildest section, which is packed with Mealy Blue Sage (also popular with large bees) and Sunflowers. This is an area that is so dense during the summer that there isn’t really a way to walk into it and unless there is a significant problem I largely leave it alone until winter when the plants have died back. Sunflowers are nearing the end of their blooming season, but I leave the seed heads as bird food.
In other parts of the garden, if bindweed grows it can wrap tightly around other plant stems. When that happens, I pull it out, although I know I may be leaving roots in the ground. Once it’s blooming, the vine is easy to spot and it’s not too hard to keep it under control.
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