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Mid-Atlantic Gardening

can you help me identify this vine in my groundcover

19 years ago

Hi all-

I have a weedy vine invading a shady slope in my front yard-- the slope is covered in periwinkle, but this invader is making a mess of it. It tends to just grow upward, and spreads underground. The pictures show it where there's nothing for it to grab on to, but in the few areas where its found a shrub it does tend to twine it's way into it. It's stem is red (although greenish when young) and the leaves are in 2-leaf pairs fairly distantly spaced apart (like 3-5 inches). Sometimes the leaves are notched, but not always. After a disastrous attempt at pulling it up where I made it worse, I knew I needed something...stronger, but I needed something that I could apply without killing everything else. I tried VineX-- which comes with a wick to apply it-- I applied it a couple of times but it never seemed to work. Know what this beast is? Any advice on getting rid of it?

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Comments (4)

entangled
19 years ago
It's Japanese honeysuckle. I just pull it out, but that's tricky when it's growing amongst the Vinca like that. I don't know how else to get rid of it without killing the Vinca, but maybe the link below will be of some help.

Here is a link that might be useful: invasivespecies.gov: Japanese Honeysuckle
hpadgette
Original Author
19 years ago
Thanks-- I kept seeing mention of Japanese honeysuckle, but this stuff doesn't ever flower -- are there non-flowering varieties? The trouble for me with pulling it out is that it inevitably breaks (seems to grown under and through the vinca) and then, like 10 of them grow back (it's like some mythological creature!)....
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I personally haven't seen it go through a season, since I just started working with a landscaper Oct 2014. However we planted these at some houses going up in Preston Hollow and they're all looking great a few months later. Already a good deal larger than when we put them in. I've only had my plants for the past month, I'm splitting them and growing them out to fill in some blank spots in my current house, and I water regularly and well. Can't comment on keeping them dry. (I've been told they're very drought tolerant by people that I trust, but I'd like to see it before I said that it's a sure thing.) After these past few weeks though, I can say that they're -definitely- flood tolerant. As are my Needle Palms. Man I'm starting to love these things.
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Here are better photos. the top one is the stems, looks like they flower pink or purple. I bought this recently and it is in bad shape. Trying to nurse it back. Any help on how to care for this would be helpful as well. Thank you
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breezyb
19 years ago
Yup - honeysuckle. I have TONS of it here, & after 8 years we're just starting to get it under control. It's intertwined itself thru all the trees on the property, & not all of it flowers.
vladpup
19 years ago
G'Day!
Evil stuff! i have this mixed with poisen ivy as the groundcover in the hedgerow between my farm and our neighbor's fallow fields. It is all under my rasberries. Pull and pull and pull, and i have seen no progress in three years of work. Then again, there are hundreds of foot of infested hedgerow and only one of my and i would rahter put my effort into working on the parts of the garden closer to the house. But one day...

Just hope it doens't swamp the raspberries before i get them cleaned.

- Happy gardening,
-vlad

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