Matt, here it is Virginia Creeper and redbud seedlings and seedlings of kolreuteria/golden rain tree. I can't tell you how many times I have cut them down and even painted stumps with diesel fuel.....yet they rear their ugly little heads at the base of the foundation, amidst a clump of lilies and other places where I can't get to them!

The Japanese Beetles have stripped bare the Va Creeper that was climbing the ash tree but I bet you it is back next year.

Matt,

I hear you and I understand what you're saying, but I love trumpet creeper anyway. I planted one to cover our tornado shelter and it is just this huge mass of green with lovely orange flowers and all you can see is the door of the shelter. I love that it shades the shelter and keeps it cool enough to function as a root cellar in summer. (Without the shade of the trumpet creeper, the tornado shelter gets up into the 80s on hot days. With the shade it stays in the 70s.)

I do have to remember to very aggressively cut it back from around the door just about weekly or it covers it up.

Here, the trumpet creeper is one of the last plants to turn brown and start to die back to the ground during a very servere and prolonged drought. It never dies, but it goes semi-dormant although only during the worst drought years like 2003 and 2005-20006.

It is native here. Some folks a few miles south of it have it growing along about a 200' long section of fence that separates their house/lawn area from the pastures beyond and it is gorgeous. Impenetrable? Yes. That's not always a bad thing when you have lots of wildlife roaming around your rural home.

Would I plant it in a neat, tidy urban or suburban yard? No. I'm out in the boonies though, so I've planted both 'Madam Galens' and 'Flava' (the yellow-flowered version). We have two near the porch, where they're climbing the walls of the two-story house and helping shade it from the sun. We have the one that hides the tornado shelter. We have two on an arbor next to our driveway gate....they're about 300' from the house, in the worst clay in the world, and have never gotten very big because of that clay, and because they must rely only on rainfall.

I'm sure the trumpet creepers will be here long after we are gone. I have seen old country houses, long abandoned and collapsing slowly and returning to dust, that are buried under tons of trumpet creeper. It is one of those truly hardy plants about which old southerners say "it won't die, and you can't kill it".

Glenda,

Here we have the Virginia creeper and I have to work to keep it from creeping into my veggie garden. It is climbing the garden fence on the northwest side of the garden right now, in the area where the woodland keep trying to encroach into my garden. We also have it on the north side of the house under shrubs and it climbs the wall some there too.

Redbud seedlings are a dime a dozen here and we cut them with our weedeater before they get large enough to start thinking they're trees. We have some on the edges of our woodlands and I like them there, but don't need them up close to the house since their foliage tends to look so bad in July and August.

We don't have golden rain tree here, and I think I'm glad about that. I see one in Ardmore every now and then and it looks lovely in its particular setting, but I sure don't want them here.

Our most invasive native vine is the greenbrier which is everywhere in the woods. I hate it, but leave it most everywhere in the woodland because the wildlife eat the berries. I do have trouble with native grapes trying to grow in places where I don't want them too.

Dawn

Dawn,
We have it growing along our fence line with the neighbors. It sends up shoots at least 30 ft into the front yard and every weekend, i'm out there picking them one by one. It drives me crazy! I like the look of it as it creeps over the fence line and up the trees, if only it would behave itself and stay in one place! I got so mad that over the winter, I pulled out all of the vines I could from the fence and out of the tree that it had climbed up (nearly 50 ft up!). Unfortunately, this only served as a "rejuvenation pruning" for it and it came back with a vengeance! Ah well, we can't control everything.

-Matt

Well, here's a solution. Plant sweet autumn clematis and before long it will crowd out the trumpet vine. The person who lived here before had honeysuckle and trumpet vine planted on an archway, and the two of them battle it out for control of my side yard. I do have to pull it out of places where I don't want it, but all in all it's not nearly as difficult to control as the clematis, which is EVERYWHERE - even trying to strangle the houseplants on my deck. The flowers are nice late in summer though, so I tolerate it (as if I had a choice). Right now it's bermudagrass that is giving me the most grief, because I let it go for too long in a couple of my flower beds and once the ground bakes a little like it has the last couple of weeks, it's impossible to pull it out, especially in this heat. I have heard that kudzu is in Oklahoma now, and I think I may have it trying to take hold in a couple of places in my yard. Yikes.

Speaking of vines, are there any good sources online with photos to identify types of vines by the leaves? Some type of vine is growing in one of the flower beds that I'm not familiar with and would like to know what it is before I decide whether to leave it or pull it out. So far I'm seeing only leaves, no flowers on it.

Suzie

I have some crabgrass that you can add to your sales catalog. How about this for a sign:

"Dig your own for half price! Have a green lawn NOW. Fills in INSTANTLY".

Matt,

Can't you just mow down the sprouts wherever they come up in the yard? Mine doesn't sprout out into the yard, but it is trying to bury the house and porch. Someday, you won't be able to see my house.....just a giant green blob of trumpet creeper with a doorway. I'm thinking positive though....once my house is fully shaded by trumpet creeper, the electric bill should be lower in summer.

Do you know if yours is the common native one or if it is an improved variety like 'Madame Galens'? Supposedly, the native one is more prone to spread, and the one I have is Madam Galens and it doesn't sound like it is trying to spread as much as your is. However, I also know people who have planted Madame Galens and found it terribly invasive.

You could plant bamboo with your trumpet creeper and see which one of them crowds out the other one. (I am not responsible for the mess you end up with if you actually do plant bamboo, by the way.)

OKPrairie,

Oh, I love Sweet Autumn Clematis, but it tends to be short-lived here in our red clay and frequent summer droughts. It tends to live 5 or 6 years and die out (even when well watered). Clearly, the problem is that you and Matt have either too much rainfall or soil that is 'too good' and that's why you're having these invasive vine problems. If you had my crappy soil and erratic rainfall, nothing would grow well enough to be invasive. : )

Kudzu. Now that is scarey. I haven't seen any but I guess I'll start watching for it. Kudzu makes great compost.

Suzie, I don't know of a specific website that features only vines. Let me see what I can come up with.

Joellen, There's someone in Ardmore that is promoting/selling crabgrass as a great pasture forage grass for cattle. Every time I see one of their ads I just cringe.

Dawn

Dawn,
I'm not positive on the variety, though i'd bet it's the common native one. I COULD just mow down the sprouts BUT someone thought it would be a great idea to go green and get rid of our gas powered mower and get an old fashioned reel mower that does a great job mowing the grass and a not so great job mowing weeds that are more than an inch higher than the grass.

P.S. that person is me..as my fiancee keeps reminding me. :)

Hmm...crabgrass, now that's a weed I can live with. At least it looks nice and green when you mow it. Grass is grass in my book, although i'm sure our neighbors with perfect lawns say differently in the neighborhood association meetings.

-Matt

Y'all are too, too funny! I have most of what you all have, trumpet vine, Virginia Creeper, greenbriar, redbud seedlings (some are almost trees now), sweet autumn clematis, crabgrass, and let me add Rose of Sharon and Queen Anne's Lace to the list, too. Hate these things and yet they persist.

Actually, I don't hate the Virginia Creeper, because I have raised many a beautiful sphinx moth that uses this vine as a host plant. Nothin' uses the other stuff, tho.

It would take a boatload of Roundup to make a dent in any of these, and my neighbor has been trying for years to get rid of his trumpet creeper with it, and yet it is still there, still climbing his roof, and I get free shares of it via his vine. I try to cut off the seedpods - have you ever seen these? Gigantic, man-eating pods that contain like a gazillion seeds. If you cut them off while they are still green, tho, the seeds won't become viable. A neverending job....sigh.....

Susan

Susan,

It's kind of funny that we work so hard to get certain plants to survive here and at the same time we are trying to get rid of the plants that do so well. It makes me think that maybe the problem is just us???

-Matt

Susan,

I just let my seedpods dry and scatter to the wind. With our hot sun-baked dry clay and lack of rainfall, they never survive long enough to sprout here. I guess that's one advantage of having long, hot, dry summers with little rainfall. I'd like for the yellow-flowered one to reseed along the bar ditch or fenceline close to it, but in ten years it never has.

Matt,

Seven or eight years ago, I pretty much did just that. I stopped planting oodles of perennials that really struggled with the heat and unrelenting cycles of drought and switched almost entirely to native plants, or at least to plants that have naturalized. All my shrubs, vines, trees, and most flowers that have survived/thrived are the ones that either grow wild here or that are related to the natives here. My annuals mostly reseed or they wouldn't be here either. I decided to stop fighting Mother Nature and to work with her, and it has made life infinitely simpler.

Of course, in the veggie garden and fruit orchard, it is a different story since I'm planting what we want to eat and not what chooses to just pop up out of the ground. We do, however, encourage the native fruits like persimmons, wild grapes, wild dewberries and native plums and harvest them whenever we can....which is to say that if we beat the wild animals to them, we harvest them. Getting the native fruit before the wildlife gets them can be quite a challenge since hungry wildlife will eat green sour fruit before it ripens whereas we humans like to let them ripen first.

Dawn

You can count me in - I battle trumpet vine every year - thanks to a very well pruned specimen in my neighbors yard. To her credit, she keeps it pruned up sort of like a topiary - but despite that, I find it growing all over my yard, flower beds, etc.

I don't mind the redbuds so much - totally reminds me of my grandmother (I actually purposely planted one and have left two others alone that came up on their own.)

I also get a few other vines - been really battling one this year that I had never seen before and am still not sure what it is because I can't find it online in any pictures or anything. Very fast growing, with a skinny heart shaped leaf and definitely grabs a hold of anything and everything.

Anyway, I included a link to the Oklahoma Invasive Plant Council which has photographs of some plants and county maps showing where specific species have been found.

~Laura

Here is a link that might be useful: Oklahoma Invasive Plant Council

Laura,

Does your new vine with the skinny heart-shaped leaf have tough, glossy leaves or tender, fuzzier leaves with the same texture as a morning glory leaf? I've seen both here and if I think hard enough, maybe I can remember what they are.

I looked at the photo of kudzu. It is scarey that it is here. I'd welcome it (well, not really) if it would shade out the Johnson Grass and field bindweed, as if anything could.

Dawn

Susan, the Rose of Sharon actually does get used - by bees and hummingbirds. When the hummingbirds show up in late summer they stake a claim to my Rose of Sharon and chase off every other bird that gets near it, even though the other birds aren't the least bit interested in the flowers. Somehow the hummers and bees manage to share, though.

Laura, the vine you described sounds just like one I fight everywhere on my property. In my family, we've always just called it "choker vine" as it tries to choke the life out of any other plant it gets hold of.

Debra

I have that vine popping up everywhere in our garden here in OKC. I kind of like it though. It climbs up everything and adds a kind of graceful quality. Plus, it's very easy to pull up as compared to trumpet vine. I successfully transplanted some to various places around the yard.
-Matt