Pronounciation: E-po-MO-ee-a car-NE-a

Hardiness zones
Sunset 12-24
USDA 9-11

Landscape Use: Flowering accent shrub for tropical and subtropical garden color in "old fashioned" tropical desert gardens.

Form & Character: Topical looking, upright, bold, stiff, brittle, open shrubby.

Growth Habit: Partially deciduous, mostly herbaceous perennial shrub, mostly dormant during winter changing to rapid growth during warm season growing in a single season to 10- to 15-feet tall if allowed to growth unrestricted, multiple basal stems.

Foliage/Texture: Medium green, cordate to deltoid large leaves to 5-inches long with distinct petiole and prominent mid-vein, leaf margins slightly undulating; medium coarse texture.

Flowers & Fruits: Flowers have fused petals, corolla extended, margins sometimes ruffled, mostly pink, sometimes white, numerous on terminal clusters; fruits are brown, multicarpulate, seeds are hairy and poisonous especially to livestock.

Seasonal Color: Spring and summer flowering accent.

Temperature: Summer heat-loving, but highly freese sensitive.

Light: Full sun

Soil: Surprisingly tolerant of alkaline soils.

Watering: Established plants need standard summer irrigations to maintain a vigorous look. Can be induced into a deciduous habit with extended summer drought.

Pruning: Bush morning glory is suprisingly responsive to many differnt pruning strategies, ranging from severe renewal pruning during winter to regular heading cuts creating an informal hedge appearance.

Propagation: Seed, softwood cuttings.

Disease and Pests: Orange blister beetle

Additional comments: Bush morning glory is a decidedly subtropical and heat-loving flowering shrub that is not often seen in contemporary Phoenix landscape designs. Medical studies from 1997 indicate that pollen of bush morning glory contain allergenic proteins. Bush morning glory is toxic to livestock.