It is early May, and while our drought here in Florida continues to beat down many plant species and is taking a toll on wildlife, this native vine is thriving and providing food and sanctuary for migrating hummingbirds, specifically, ruby throats.
While out watering my vegetable garden this week, it took but a minute or two after my watering commenced for the hummingbirds, which had been foraging high in the blooming vines clinging to the pine trees, to zoom down and take advantage of the fresh water. They weren’t shy about taking a shower in the spray, following my hose like it was some kind of life line.
Every acre of marshy land is dried up and thirsting for rain, except for a deep hole that the alligators keep cleared further up the slough. And while Florida’s normal dry season is winter and spring, we never did get our average share of rain last year, so we entered this year in a deficit, and the water table, which is usually quite obvious here at the edge of the cypress swamp, has gone deep underground. Even the red maples are wilting.
Trumpet vine is not disturbed by drought, and I am not sure it surrenders to anything, because I have never seen this species in distress. Some people hate it because of its success, as if it is a foreign invader like kudzu, but it doesn’t blanket trees like kudzu does, blocking out the sun. Rather than cover their hosts in a sprawling mass of large leaves, trumpet creeper vines climb up by clinging tightly to bark or to the sides of buildings until they find a happy place and then send out graceful, slender shoots with delicate, lacy foliage which allow both some filtered light and air to pass through. These shoots do not extend far from the vine if they do not encounter any support, so rarely do they extend as far as the branches of the host trees do.
Trumpet creeper doesn’t have tendrils like grape vines, but does send short holdfasts from its old wood rather like English ivy where it grows against a surface, and this is not be good for mortared brick, of course, but doesn’t seem to harm trees. Because these holdfasts penetrate surfaces, it is best not to plant the vine on trellises next to houses. The vine can grow to impressive size very quickly and to prevent its spread it is best to put it on a pole or trellis in an isolated place where you can mow completely around it.
The problem isn’t its hummingbird-friendly topside so much as it is what it does below. The vine’s roots system spreads like wildfire underground, popping up unexpectedly everywhere, much as does passion vine. Orange-red flowers in late summer give way to long seed pods packed with seeds on silky parachutes, seeds that can travel quite far. And more than a few gardeners have planted it far from its native home along rivers and sloughs, some to their regret, some to their joy.
It is not the sort of vine an HOA would tolerate, because it is anything but tidy, and happy warrior that it is, it ignores boundaries. It is a free spirit, generous with its blessings to birds and bees and even the ants that seek out its nectaries, but it is also assertive. It can settle in and set up shop anywhere, from the unkempt fence lines between the woods and civilization, to the occasional urban telephone pole, to rocky gravel piles and abandoned barns and houses.
But the plant’s true nature is to reside in the wild lowlands on the banks of sloughs and along watercourses seldom traveled where it has long been content to quietly mind its own business.