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doxiedr

'Trumpet' Vines?

mbuckmaster
16 years ago

Hello to everyone!...I am a new member and have only been in NC for a year and a half or so (transplanted from FL, so everything is new and exciting to me here!). One of the gardening joys I am barely able to wait for is planting hummingbird attractors. I had some pentas and salvia in a container last year, some bee balm (that didn't survive the drought), and the hummingbirds came in droves. For a newbie Floridian, it was an unbelievable sight and experience. I am hooked now and have already ordered some perennials to coerce more hummers into my yard (more scarlet bee balm, columbines, cardinal flower for the shade, a few red hot pokers, and a variegated weigela).

I'm planting these in a sunny spot right in front of a wooded section at the middle back of my property. There's also a double-trunked tulip poplar set apart from the woods in this area that's at least 80' tall, which seems like a great "trellis" for one of these flowering vines hummingbirds love so much.

So (finally!) my question is about the few different "trumpet" vines I've seen. I put trumpet in quotation marks because it seems there's some confusion around the web about which is which...definitely there is for me! I've ordered something from an online retailer that's actually named "trumpet vine", which I have now read is invasive or at the very least will take over your garden. I obviously do not want this one. I was originally thinking of "trumpet honeysuckle", which I've heard is not invasive, flowers in mid- to late March (right when hummers start to come back), and is not invasive like Japanese honeysuckle (although it is an aggressive grower, I've read it doesn't spread by rhizomes, and so just needs to be pruned to stay in relative control). Then there's crossvine, which is sometimes mislabeled as trumpet vine because it looks a lot like it (but without the invasiveness), and something called "trumpet creeper," which is confused with pretty much everything else I've listed here. So the semantics are confused, I'm confused, and now you're probably confused too! =)

It sounds like if I can find a true trumpet honeysuckle, that'll be what I want. But is it invasive at all, or easily confused at the garden center with its invasive trumpet cousin? I don't want to plant the wrong one by accident. Any advice and expertise would be greatly appreciated!

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