Hedge bindweed
Calystegia sepium
Family · Convolvulaceae · Poisonous
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This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
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The climber with large white trumpet flowers covering hedges and riverside reedbeds in summer. It always twines the same way, anticlockwise.
Streams and ditches · Roadsides and waste ground · Fields and pasture · Town and roadside
Also known asbellbind, larger bindweed
How to tell it
A twining smooth stem to three metres. Arrowhead leaves with two well-marked square lobes at the base. Pure white funnel flowers five to seven centimetres, with no coloured veining. Behind the flower two large bracts completely hide the calyx, which separates it from the bindweeds.
What it is confused with
Field bindweed
Convolvulus arvensis
Size decides: two centimetres on field bindweed, six on hedge bindweed. And field bindweed often has pink stripes on the funnel, this is pure white. Both are purgative.
What it is for
None
Like the others in the family it contains strongly purgative resin glycosides, and the root was used as a violent laxative. It is neither eaten nor tasted.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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