Some of our spring wildflowers like the phlox and the Carolina jessamine are waning, and they are beginning to be replaced by summers wildflower crop. One of my favorite summer wildflowers are the Alamo vine flowers (Distimake dissectus). From the road they look to be pretty, white, trumpet shaped flowers, but when you get closer to them you can see that there is actually quite a bit of color to them. Of course, the most colorful part is the pink throat of the flower that you will never see unless you get relatively close. These flowers are members of the morning glory family (Convolvulaceae) and like most of the others in this family, they open in the morning and begin closing in the afternoon. By dusk they are usually completely closed. I love photographing them when they are partly closed because of the way the petals wrinkle and twist around themselves. Then if you look down into the throat you get a lovely crimson surprise.

These vines grow wild all over the north central Florida area, and will be with us until the cooler weather comes in the fall. They start off in the late spring as just small, spindly vines, but they love to climb, so by summer’s end you will see them draped over fences and climbing up into the trees everywhere. Some people also plant them as decorative plants to climb a trellis or cover a wire fence. These photos are actually from last summer since right now we are still in the vine stages, but as soon as flowers start to appear you can bet that my camera and I will be there!