The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Convolvulus arvensis
Also called Creeping Jenny, European Bindweed, Small Bindweed, Bindweed, Common Bindweed, European Morning Glory, Lesser Bindweed
Field bindweed is a rhizomatous, twining perennial weed native to Europe and Asia, with trumpet-shaped white or pale pink flowers. It is grown deliberately only by few gardeners and is best kept under control, since its deep roots make it very hard to eradicate.
Convolvulus arvensis, or field bindweed, is a species of bindweed in the Convolvulaceae native to Europe and Asia. It is a rhizomatous and climbing or creeping herbaceous perennial plant with stems growing to 0.5–2 metres (1.6–6.6 ft) in length. It is usually found at ground level with small white and pink flowers.
Other common names, mostly obsolete, include lesser bindweed, European bindweed, withy wind (in basket willow crops), perennial morning glory, small-flowered morning glory, creeping Jenny, and possession vine.
Bindweed contains several alkaloids which are toxic for mice, including pseudotropine, and lesser amounts of tropine, tropinone, and meso-cuscohygrine. The alkaloids are also reported to give the plant psychoactive properties.
Its leaves contain glycosides and have been traditionally used to treat hypertension and as a laxative and diuretic.
Plants are typically found inhabiting farmland, waste places, along roads, in pastures, grassy slopes, and also along streams in North America. It is able to colonise hot asphalt surfaces by covering it from the sides of roads, and worm its way between pavement stones. It grows from 600 to 4,500 metres (2,000 to 14,800 ft) in altitude in China, and is absent from the warmer southern provinces. It prefers dry areas with humus-poor, nutrient-rich and alkaline soils. It is a characteristic species in the phytosociological vegetation association Convolvulo-Agropyretum, belonging to the couch grass dry grasslands alliance (called Convolvulo-Agropyrion repentis in syntaxonomy).
Although it produces attractive flowers, it is often unwelcome in gardens as a nuisance weed due to its rapid growth and choking of cultivated plants. It was most likely introduced into North America as a contaminant in crop seed as early as 1739, and became an invasive species. Its dense mats invade agricultural fields and reduce crop yields; it is estimated that crop losses due to this plant in the United States exceeded US$377 million in the year 1998 alone. It is one of the most serious weeds of agricultural fields in many temperate regions of the US.
Mallow bindweed · Silverbush · Ground Blue Convolvulus · Scammony · Convolvulus sepium · Bindweed
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Convolvulus arvensis by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
