My sweet potatoes are starting to flower and I had completely forgotten how beautiful sweet potato flowers are!
Their lovely white and purple flowers just jump right out of the lush dark green foliage to say hello.
Sweet potato flowers look a lot like ornamental morning glory flowers. As a matter of fact, sweet potatoes are part of the same family as morning glories, Convolvulaceae. Sweet potato flowers have a tubular throat and a flat rim that flares out creating a saucer-like flower. While most sweet potatoes are white with a purple throat, some flowers are completely purple.
I've been growing Beauregard sweet potatoes here for the last few years and these photos are all from the plants in my garden. I don't have any all purple flowers, Beauregard sweet potato flowers are white with purple throats.
The sweet potato flowers stay open for only one day, but since the flowers appear on clusters with anywhere from one to 20 or more buds, you could potentially have quite a few flowers appearing in your garden in late summer or early fall. The sweet potato flowers easily attract honeybees, hummingbirds and other pollinators too.
I've read that the more sweet potatoes flower, the better the harvest may be. I'm hoping that's true because we have tons of flowers this year!
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