verges

These are out on the verges all up Cuesta Road - these are exceptionally pretty in pink and white (most are white, or white with the very palest of pink stripes).  Technically, I think they are Field Bindweed, but they may be escaped Morning Glories - they are the same family, in any case.  Morning Glories are not native to New Mexico, though Field Bindweed is ... so it seems appropriate to be thinking about them alongside dandelions, or at least alongside the part of my dandelion chapter where I talk about the whole controversial vocabulary (which goes way back into the nineteenth century) of "invasive" species - and "native" species, and whether "invasive" species are always bad (we're back with tumbleweed, and stuff like Giant Hogweed and Japanese Knotweed - indeed, on the forms for selling the Wimbledon house I had to promise that there wasn't any Japanese Knotweed anywhere on the property).  So whilst it may be Bad if huge plants take off and smother all other vegetation, and allow no space for anything to grow underneath it (like rhododendrons murder young trees, so are very bad for forests) - what if you have some Morning Glories meandering apparently harmlessly up a roadside?  They might even act as soil stabilizers.  I don't in fact think that my invasive/native etc writing is going to occupy more than a few paragraphs, so I have a huge accumulation of facts that aren't going to make it in there - like the people in the dustbowl who survived in the 1930s on canning young tumbleweed shoots.  Maybe I should be careful when I despise it, after all.