This is a large and, on the whole, aristocratic family.
About two thousand different kinds of plants belong to it; but not so many in our climate. Perhaps not more than two hundred of the Convolvulaceæ, which is the proper name of this family, come as far North as we live.
They are rather cold-blooded people, these Convolvulaceæ, and prefer to stay in or near the tropics.
Up our way are the morning-glories, as you know. This is not their native home, though, as it is of the bloodroots, the bindweeds, and all the other wild flowers.
They were brought here from the hot part of America, near the equator. Somebody saw them, no doubt, and of course fell in love with them and sent some seeds to their friends in the North, or else took them when they went home.
Perhaps a sailor boy, landing in South America and seeing the bright flowers in the morning sunshine, thought of the New England village where he lived and which he often longed for there in that strange hot country, and perhaps he sent the seeds of these bright flowers home in a letter. But whoever may have sent the first seeds, it is certain the morning-glories received a hearty welcome in our Northern world. And they soon behaved like old settlers.
They grew cheerily where they were planted, and their seeds fell to the ground, where they managed to survive the cold Northern winter.
This must have been a great surprise to them the first time they felt it!
Then up they came in the spring just as though they were at home. They even strayed away from the people’s gardens and grew wild near the villages.
Perhaps they met their Northern cousins the bindweeds there. And what a surprise that must have been,—to come up from South America and find a member of one’s own family who had always lived in the cold North!