A trailing or climbing annual vine with heart-shaped leaves and purple to white flowers. Primarily a weed of agronomic crops, nurseries, landscapes and noncrop areas that is found throughout the eastern half of the United States except for the far northern states. Cotyledon lobes are rounded and not pointed to any degree and cotyledons are also almost perfectly square in outline. The first true leaf is heart shaped as are all subsequent leaves, but the first true leaf often is without hairs unlike the subsequent leaves. Older leaves have rounded bases that often overlap, unlike pitted morningglory.
All leaves occur on relatively long petioles.
Occur in clusters of 3 or more and may be purple to white in color, or have some traces of both colors. A brown capsule containing 4 to 6 dark brown to black seeds. However, the cotyledons of tall morningglory are usually more square in outline when compared to the cotyledons of either ivyleaf or entireleaf morningglory.