Ipomoea simplex

Ipomoea simplex
Ipomoea simplex by Walter Hood Fitch
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
Clade:	Tracheophytes
Clade:	Angiosperms
Clade:	Eudicots
Clade:	Asterids
Order:	Solanales
Family:	Convolvulaceae
Genus:	Ipomoea
Species:	I. simplex
Binomial name
Ipomoea simplex Thunb.

Ipomoea simplex is a central and eastern

The Earl of Derby presented Kew Gardens with a "rounded uncouth-looking tuber" in 1844, having acquired it from the Eastern Cape, and all were completely unprepared for the beauty of its flowers that appeared in July 1845. After flowering, the stems died down nearly to the tuber. The following description is taken verbatim from the plant's appearance in Curtis's Botanical Magazine of 1846:

Root a solitary tuber, larger than a good-sized apple, subglobose. Stems from six inches to a foot long, slender, suberect, but feeble and scarcely able to support themselves, woody at the base and there more or less divided, glabrous, as is every part of the plant. Leaves alternate, nearly sessile, three, four, or more inches long, narrow almost linear-lanceolate, tapering at both extremities, frequently recurved, the margins waved, quite entire. Flowers large, handsome, from the lower part of the stem, each on a short peduncle. Calyx of five broadly lanceolate, acuminated, and at the apex somewhat recurved, sepals. Corolla large, fine rose-colour: the tube slightly enlarged upwards and expanding into the broad spreading limb. Stamens five, inserted at the base of the tube, included, two long, and three short. Filaments subulate, downy at the base, style included. Stigma large, capitate, two-lobed, granulated