PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Ipomoea / Brazilian Bayhops (subsp. brasiliensis)
Wikimedia Commons — CC, credited & licensed per image
Convolvulaceae family

Brazilian Bayhops (subsp. brasiliensis) Ipomoea pes-caprae subsp. brasiliensis subspecies

Native Specialist-bee host
Also known as: Bayhops · Beach morning glory · Goat foot · Goat's foot

Brazilian Bayhops (subsp. brasiliensis) is a perennial vine native to Hawaii, the lower 48 states, and the Pacific Basin. A host for pollen-specialist native bees.

More about this plant

Ipomoea pes-caprae, also known as bayhops, bay-hops, beach morning glory, railroad vine, or goat's foot, is a common pantropical creeping vine belonging to the family Convolvulaceae. It grows on the upper parts of beaches and endures salted air. It is one of the most common and most widely distributed salt tolerant plants and provides one of the best known examples of oceanic dispersal. Its seeds float and are unaffected by salt water. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 8 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Lifespan
Perennial
In the garden
Vine / climber layer — Sits in the vine of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~39 caterpillar species

Ipomoea supports ~39 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a strong genus.

Recorded feeding on Ipomoea in North America, including:

Agrius cingulata · Pink-Spotted Hawkmoth Agrotis gladiaria · Swordsman Dart Agrotis ipsilon · Dark Sword-Grass Agrotis subterranea · owlet moth Amorbia emigratella · leafroller moth Athetis miranda · owlet moth
+ 8 more species →
Autographa precationis · Common Looper Bedellia minor Bedellia somnulentella · Convolvulus Leafminer Cosmopterix bendidia · cosmet moth Cosmopterix clemensella · cosmet moth Cosmopterix gemmiferella · cosmet moth Danaus plexippus · Monarch Emmelina monodactyla · plume moth
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
✦ Bees specialist-bee host

Specialist native bees depend on it.

Some native bees are pollen specialists (oligolectic) — they raise young only on pollen from particular plant genera. Ipomoea is a recorded specialist-bee host, so losing it can mean losing the bee that relies on it.

Xerces pollinator conservation →
Specialist hosts from Smith et al. 2024.
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
Sources for this entry (13) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts · Smith et al. 2024 (CC BY)
[09] Conservation rank — NatureServe Explorer (CC BY)
[10] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[11] Other common names — Wikidata (CC0)
[12] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[13] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…