{"id":5271,"date":"2025-01-16T16:32:59","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T21:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu\/mastergardener\/?page_id=5271"},"modified":"2026-02-20T12:59:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T17:59:36","slug":"vexing-vines-on-wendys-wanderings","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu\/mastergardener\/resources\/newsletters\/vexing-vines-on-wendys-wanderings\/","title":{"rendered":"Vexing Vines on Wendy's Wanderings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Wendy’s Wanderings<\/h2>\n\n\n
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\"Wendy<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Vexing Vines<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally published August 5, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Why did I ever plant these vines in my landscape?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever asked yourself this question? It rang in my ears again this past week when I was cutting and pulling sky vine (Thunbergia grandiflora<\/em>) off my citrus trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It looks pretty,” they said. “It’ll jazz up the back fence with purple flowers,” they promised. “It’s not too bad to control.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

File these under: fibs that plant friends have told me about vines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another vine in this file folder is Mexican flame vine<\/a> (Pseudogynoxys chenopodioides<\/em>), currently running all over the mulch bed, where it is supposed to be confined to the 5-foot wire obelisk that it outgrew in three weeks (ha!). Star jasmine<\/a> (Trachelospermum jasminoides<\/em>) is on my watch list too. I love the intoxicating fragrance from the small white flowers in late spring and its evergreen nature, but it never stops growing. If I don’t prune it several times a year it will climb to the top of my 50-foot tree canopy and make seeds!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Prune the vines” is always on my gardening to-do list, and by that I usually mean the orange-flowered trumpet creeper<\/a> (Campsis radicans<\/em>). Unlike the aforementioned, this vine is a Florida native. But it is still trying to move into my house by way of the bedroom window.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The view from the ground. That’s all star jasmine covering a 50 foot tree!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Now, I don’t have it out for all the vines that I have planted. I enjoy\u00a0hyacinth bean<\/a>\u00a0(Lablab purpureus<\/em>) and moonflowers (Ipomea alba<\/em>) because they are annuals. I have to save the seeds for these and I miss them when they are gone. Also the native\u00a0coral honeysuckle<\/a>\u00a0(Lonicera sempervirens<\/em>) is well-behaved\u2014and the hummingbird’s favorite. The native\u00a0Passiflora vine<\/a>\u00a0is welcome in my butterfly garden because it spends most of its time recovering from gulf fritillary caterpillar feeding. When I make some space I would consider trying the\u00a0native\u00a0wisteria<\/a> (Wisteria frutescens<\/em>), and the yellow flowering native\u00a0Carolina jessamine<\/a>\u00a0(Gelsemium sempervirens<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I will remember our mantra “Right Plant Right Place” and be realistic about my maintenance levels the next time my fibbing gardening friends give me a start of “beautiful vine.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

— Wendy Wilber<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":1989,"menu_order":16,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"featured_post":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5271","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu\/mastergardener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu\/mastergardener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu\/mastergardener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu\/mastergardener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu\/mastergardener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5271"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu\/mastergardener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7861,"href":"https:\/\/gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu\/mastergardener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5271\/revisions\/7861"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu\/mastergardener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardeningsolutions.ifas.ufl.edu\/mastergardener\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}