See how astonished the morning-glory at the bottom of the page looks as it gazes upon its cousin the bindweed!
For the bindweeds, you must know, are like the bloodroots and mandrakes and other wild flowers; they are natives of our Northern climate.
There are several kinds of bindweeds just as there are several kinds of morning-glories; but they are all, morning-glories and bindweeds alike, descended from some way-back convolvulus ancestor, just as you and your cousins and your second cousins and your third cousins and your fourteenth cousins are all descended from the same great, great, great, way-back grandfather.
There is another member of the Convolvulus Family with which we are all pretty well acquainted, and that is our little red-flowered cypress vine. You remember it, with its feathery leaves which we train over trellises in our flower gardens.
You would hardly think at first glance that it was a relative of the morning-glory. But it is, as you would discover if you looked at it very carefully and saw how much it is like a morning-glory in its way of growing, in spite of appearances.
It comes to us from Mexico, and you could hardly expect a Mexican convolvulus to be just like a South American one, the habits of the two countries are so different, you know.
Why, you would hardly know your own relatives if they had been born and brought up in South America for a few generations.
The next time you go to Mexico be sure and look out for the cypress vine, which, for all I know, may be looked upon as just a common weed there, as we look at thistles and dandelions here. We would think thistles and dandelions beautiful flowers if we had to raise them in gardens with a great deal of trouble. But because we have to dig them out of our gardens and lawns we call them weeds and detest them.