Joann Merritt's Essays

Bindweed
March, 2000

Bindweed and witches are intertwined in a tale of legend and lore. It is said that witches would take an object (a Voodoo Doll?) and wrap bindweed around it nine times in order to cast a spell on that person. The spell was most powerful when it was performed three days before a full moon. If farmers could only reverse this spell they would put a hex on the aggressive bindweeds and thus eliminate them from their fields. Farmers do not consider bindweed a pretty little wildflower and do not appreciate it spreading across their fields choking out cultivated crops.

Of the two species of bindweeds that grow in Midland County the one usually seen is Texas Bindweed (Convulvulus equitans). It has small white funnel-shaped flowers with a deep red center and throat. Although the flower’s 5 petals are not separated they come to a distinct point where each petal is joined to the next one. The quickly spreading long stems do not root at the nodes or joints and hence do not form thick mats.

Common Bindweed (Convulvus arvensis) has larger flowers that bloom abundantly, opening in the mornings and closing in the afternoons. The stems grow to 3 feet long from a deep perennial root which sends out additional creeping roots forming extensive colonies. Ditches abloom with these white or pink flowers against the green mats of twining stems and leaves nicely decorate the roadsides for wildflower enthusiasts even if not for the farmers.

While driving on a county road east of Santa Rosa, New Mexico Burr Williams came upon large areas of bindweed which had spread as much as 4 to 6 feet across the pavement. The road was not well traveled and it appeared that cars were going down the middle much as they do around here when sand builds up on the sides of country roads.

Bindweed is also called Possession Vine, a name understood by anyone attempting to eliminate the plant. Midland generally doesn’t have sufficient rainfall for bindweed to be worrisome but if the heavy rains of the 1980s had continued it might have become a problem. During these years a borrow ditch full of Common Bindweed began growing and multiplying adjacent to a plowed field while simultaneously the run-off water flowing down Monahans Draw bisected the same field rapidly spreading Salt Cedars along its way. There could have ensued a battle of native plants to see which would survive and take possession of the land, the Salt Cedar or the Common Bindweed.

In these present years of drought land owners would jubilantly welcome heavy rains and find a way to deal with the resulting nuisance plants.