Moonflower (Ipomoe Alba) ヨルガオ（夜顔）

Moonflower (Ipomoe Alba)　ヨルガオ（夜顔）

英語の後に日本語が続きます。

I said "Wow" and you would say so, too if you saw them. These are fruits of moonflowers (Ipomoea alba) but they look like small eggplants🍆, don't they!? Just three weeks ago, the plant gave pleasure to the eye of passerby with elegantly gorgeous large white flowers (2nd photo) while now surprising them with these small eggplant-like fruits.

The question was of course if they were edible and sadly I found moonflowers toxic in their entirety from flowers, to stems, seeds, and fruits.

When I saw the flowers for the first time, I thought they were some morning glories but didn't know their specific type but an Instagram follower told me they were moonflowers (Ipomoea alba), which made sense to me because the flowers are like the Moon and open at night. I saw them only closed or half open in the morning (5th and 6th photos).

In Japan, morning glories are broadly classified into the following three types according to the time when they open: asagao, hirugao, and yorugao, meaning "MORNING face (i.e., Ipomoea)," "AFTERNOON face (i.e., Japanese bindweed)," and "NIGHT face (i.e., moonflowers)" respectively.

But that's not it. Japan has a plant called "EVENING face," which is actually the calabash, but because of the resemblance of the flower to morning glories, the calabash is called "EVENING face" and its dried shavings of the fruit are eaten under the name of "kanpyo," which is an ingredient of SUSHI😋!!