We are all used to seeing the white trumpets of Calystegia sepium, the native Hedge Bindweed, and also the rather showier Large Bindweed Calystegia sylvatica, which came here from southwestern Europe, but this very pretty pink and white striped plant, which rather undeservingly is known as Hairy Bindweed, isn’t often seen: typically sterile, it arrived as a garden plant from Asia, and rarely gets very far from ‘civilisation’. Interestingly, it has been found in two different locations in Norfolk, both were in hedges (its favoured habitat), one was just across the lane from some houses and the other near the Norfolk and Norwich University hospital.
Other than the pink colour, which is shares with a subspecies of C. sepium, it can be recognised by the pouched bracteoles (the inflated green bits just below the flower), by the sparse hairs on the stems and also by the wing on the flower stalk. There is (confusingly) a pink form of C. sepium, but this is much smaller, and lacks the pouched bracteoles. It will carry on flowering now until late September so is well worth looking out for.
