Botanizing in Hawaii: Railroad Vine

This is a plant that I knew from my childhood visits to the south Texas shore. Railroad Vine (Ipomoea pes-caprae) is a cousin of the common Morning Glory vine that is specialized to live on beach-side sand dunes. Its seeds are salt-water tolerant and are distributed widely by ocean currents. It grows on tropical and sub-tropical beaches worldwide. On Hawai'i, we only found it growing in one location. Most of the beaches we visited were too rocky for it to prosper.

The flowers seemed to wilt under the intense sunlight. If we had found them earlier in the day, they probably would have looked more like my childhood memories of them.

The leaves are thick and smooth, with a major crease down the middle. My recollection is that the common name, "Railroad Vine" has to do with the plant's habit of growing long strait vines along the sand, with evenly spaced leaves.


References:

• http://www.sms.si.edu/irlspec/ipomoea_pescap.htm
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipomoea_pes-caprae