Thanks, Carol. I threw together some pictures on Webshots. http://community.webshots.com/album/559569193ZExkRL I'm not high-tech savvy, so I hope this works. ponderoni Here is a link that might be useful: Pics of my mystery vine

dunno if this will clarify or not from my non-scientific viewpoint, but here goes. i had i. pennata for several yrs. then, after i got too vigorous in weeding that out, i found a source of seeds for i. quamoclit, which i'd seen and wanted really bad. anyhow, it seems more seedy/weedy than pennata, and comes up all over(no hope of weeding it all out)- but always with the extremely fine ferny foliage. i have some regular ipomeas(blue heaven, saucers, granpa otts, etc.- those are multifidas) that bloom at the same time and all over each yr, but have never seen them cross with or noticed any recognisable crosses of them and quamoclit(or pennata when i grew it). the common multifida ones cross every which way but loose with each other, but at least for me they haven't boogied with quamoclit. pup- i understood your question, but don't know the answer. it makes sense that it would be part of the genetic grab bag, but i haven't seen evidence of it. maybe your yard/experience is just that. i didn't mean that species don't or can't cross earlier, just that if the seeds are pure species, they should come true. we count on seedsman to label things correctly and breed them true. there's no way to really tell, though, just by the seeds(or plants), but i hadn't seen those 2 buggers cross or spontaneously mutate. however, because the common names are so similar, they certainly could get mixed up in a seed packet. and, who's to say some birds or storms didn't help along with some seeds from neighbor's yards? anyhow, i probably was making too many assumptions & should have kept my lip buttoned. i hope i didn't hurt any feelings. and, that's a good ? about what you call a species that can't cross. anyone?

I'd not expect hemlock to be native there. Even here in Wisconsin, it was originally found only in the N.E. half, roughly speaking, of the state. But who knows? There is such a thing as an outlying population, and some of that land S. of Rockford looks like it could support hemlock. +oM

I remember my first dealings w/ this vine was back when I was a teenager :) That was a *few decades ago. We had this vine in the middle of a bed of azaleas and every freaking month, that vine would come back on its root system. It literally took us about 8 months of 2 or 3 times a month digging to get to the root system. It's not enough to "pull the vine"...what has to happen is the root system to that vine (everywhere it comes out of the ground) has to be gotten up with out being disturbed and broken apart. When I saw your original picture, it was like the summer of the late 70's early 80's. That vine was my nightmare. I pray it will be better for you. If you've caught it early that will probabaly work to your advantage. Dora