It will send up runners far from the original plant but they are easy to pull up. It's not a monster invasive vine like a wisteria or campsis radicans that are impossible to pull up and incarnata is susceptible to herbicides.

Oh Karyn, Campsis is a nightmare! Another bad one is Clerodendrum bungii, but I find it hard to believe anything could be worse that the Campsis.

"It will send up runners far from the original plant" Like, how far? I hope it doesn't start going under buildings we have here and also trying to take over the garden space I have for other plants. I wish now that I hadn't planted it in the garden space near my other plants, like coneflowers, butterfly weed, etc. I don't mind pulling out an occasional piece or two but don't want to be doing it every other day either, and I don't want this huge root system going all over everywhere.

I had a wisteria here and wow, that WAS a monster! Actually, we had planted two. The one had a "trunk" like a small tree. Those vines were trying to take over and I decided to get rid of them. Well, I don't know how many years of pulling we did but it was at least 5, probably more like 10! I will never plant that again! Fortunately, I never planted Campsis because I had heard how awful that is. I don't care how good of a nectar plant something is or if it can attract butterflies or hummingbird in droves, I won't plant it if I know ahead of time that it's a terribly invasive plant. I did read about Passiflora being invasive but thought, "Oh, it won't get bad up here in PA." Well, I'm still not so sure. I had read negative comments about it on Dave's Garden, but I think they were all in southern states.

So do you have a Passiflora there? You're in MD, aren't you, Karen? I might be thinking of another Karen though. I was just trying to compare areas. I'm in central PA. Thanks.

Cathy

I'm in MD, just outside of DC so it's about a half zone warmer here then where you are. I have no issues with incarnata getting out of control or any of the hardy passies. Actually I tend to lose them over colder then average winters and keep some in containers as a back-up. I have a number passiflora varieties but the majority aren't cold hardy and are kept in the GH over the winter.

I have an Amethyst Falls wisteria which sends up runners but isn't nearly as invasive as the Oriental varieties. Unfortunately I planted Campsis radicans about 20 years ago and spent the next 15 trying to get rid of it! It's still there. Now I just try and keep it contained way in the back of the yard.

I thought that you were from MD, Karen. :) You mentioned losing passive sometimes. I don't know if we had an extra cold winter the very first year that I planted the P. incarnata but it didn't come back up at all the next year. Maybe I should have left it at that, but I tried again and now it's sure living! So were the passies you lost ones that were older than just a year or two? I guess if I decide that I don't want this one, I can always hope for a really cold winter. lol

When you mentioned the wisteria, I thought I'd better make a correction about that I said we managed to finally kill both of ours. The ones that was growing up our tv tower technically is probably not really dead. I think it was the year before last that our grass didn't get mown as often as usual; that's when I saw that the wisteria was still alive in the middle of the lawn where the tower had been (it blew over during one of the hurricanes and that's when we got cable.

Sorry to hear that you have had such a time trying to get rid of the Campsis radicans. Now I'm really glad that I never planted that. It's not like I hadn't considered it, being that I love hummingbirds and butterflies. I try to plant a variety of plants for them and sometimes regret my choices later, like lately. Now I'm even wondering if I should have planted Lespedeza capitata, since I think it also spreads by rhizomes. I just planted it last year and still have some to plant. Now I think I might get rid of them instead. I just have more than enough other plant problems to deal with right now.
Cathy

I've lost incarnata vines that had been established for several years so maybe there's a chance if you have a really cold winter. lol

I have a Lespedeza thunbergii. It gets quite big but has never sent suckers away from the main plant but I'm not familiar with other lespedeza varieties.

Cathy, P. incarnata can pop up quite a way from the original plant (it can move 10 feet in a year, maybe more). It is best to keep it in a pot on concrete paver--that way you can keep it controlled--you should do that now with a single vine if you want to keep one. The same thing can be done with Campsis, but you have to pick the seed pods as soon as they form--each one contains hundreds of paper thin seeds. Now that you've had it in the ground for a few years now, its going to be a little work to get rid of it. P. incarnata has its main root system going laterally at some depth (8 to 18 inches). These are tuberous roots about the thickness of a pencil, sometimes more. The vines that pop up everywhere come up vertically from these lateral roots. When you find a vine, you have to dig until you get down to the laterals, and pull as much as them up as you can. Eventually you will kill it off. It might also be possible to kill it with some of the herbicides marketed for difficult weeds such as poison ivy. I have not personally tried those, but I see no reason why they wouldn't work. If your vine has only been in the ground a few years, its still probably not as large as you think. I'd put a lot of effort into it this year and next. Good luck!!!

Karen, Ha, yeah I could always hope for a really cold winter to kill it off! :) Sorry to hear that you had lost yours though since you actually wanted it. I'm not sure how much alike the two Lespedezas are and if yours doesn't send out shoots far away if mine wouldn't either.

Mark, I wish I'd have kept it in a pot instead of planting it right into the ground, but I think I might be able to kill it with a method someone pointed me to on the weeds forum. It uses the glyphosate but slowly kills it, killing off the main root, thus the entire plant, but it will take awhile. I hope you're right and that it's not as big as I think. Thanks for the tips. I'll try the best I can to get rid of it and I don't think I really want any after that because I already have enough pots to lug in and out and my aching back gets mad at me. Ha.
Cathy

I think I found one of your incarnatas coming up by my fence...and I'm in Central Florida.

:)

LOL I knew that stuff would spread a ways but...... WOW !!! ;-)

I pleaded and begged and screamed for a white P. incarnata. I got one, put it in the ground and now, I have to constantly pull and spray weed killer on them - they are beautiful but ugly at the same time - me and my bright ideas!

Kay, Sorry to hear that and I know what you mean. About 2 weeks ago I started using a method posted by Bry84 that he used to kill bindweed, which is also a vine. I made sure to dig a few sprigs of it out of the ground before I started killing it because I love the passionvine's flowers and their smell and would like to still have one here..BUT in a pot and not in the ground ever again!

If you ever decide that you want to get rid of yours, you could try that method. The results here are looking good after just the two weeks. Instead of spraying a Glyphosate weed killer (Roundup or a generic of it) on the foliage like you normally would, you gather a bunch of vines, put them in some type of container (I'm using big plastic coffee cans...after using the coffee, of course :) and sit the container down into the ground a little so it can't spill. Then you pour the Roundup (I'm using a generic form)/water solution in the container until it's not quite all the way to the top. Finally, tape plastic over the top so that no animal will try to drink the stuff. Maybe it also helps heat it up in the container and makes the solution more harmful to the plant (just guessing).

From what I read, if you would do the usual method of weed killing by spraying the foliage, the top growth of bindweed (in this case passionvine) would die down, but the root would still be active and it would only be a matter of time before you'd have new shoots popping up all over the place again. Apparently when you're dealing with something like passionvine (with that underground root system that it has), it's probably best to use a method that lets the glyphosate slowly get to the roots and over a period of time, not just a quick zap of the leaves. Having the vines in the glyphosate-filled (almost) container should allow you to effectively kill the passionvine because it kills the root system instead of just the leaves. I have hope for it working because the passionvine is really yellowing, and I see that shoots about a yard away from the original plant have wilted (and I know that I didn't accidentally get any weed killer on them or try to pull them out), so I really think that I'll have success with this method. Yay!

If you want to try this method, I don't think that it would matter if you can't gather up every single vine to put in the liquid, but I suppose the more you have in it the better/faster the results. If you have a lot of growth, I think that you could trim it down if that would make it more manageable to put in the glyphosate. It looked overwhelming here to try to get most of the vines in containers of the glyphosate all at once, so I did it on 3 separate days. Also, the vines aren't all the same length, so I waited for some to grow more so they'd be long enough to stuff down into the containers.

Below is the link to the GW weed forum thread that describes this method (maybe it's better than what I have explained...and I wanted to give credit to the person). You'll have to scroll down a little ways until you get to his name. Best of luck if you decide to get yours out of the ground (and in a pot if you want to have it at all). I really think that this is do-able! :)

Cathy

Here is a link that might be useful: Method to try to kill passionvine

( lol, caterwallin ) I remember....Grew my yellow Lilikoi (passion fruit) vine from a single seed of a fruit in Honolulu. Overtook garden worse than Kudzu!! I escaped it by moving to San Diego--only thing I can suggest to you. Or, maybe, If you have the land, try being a Passion Fruit Farmer. Found some small wrinkled purple ones here at a farmer's market for $2 Each!!

oh, I DO Love those unique tasting tangy yellow globes & miss them sooo much. If you lived closer, I'd be hiding under vines in your backyard, scavaging (even if they're purple instead).

Do you have any Oriental or other ethnic grocery stores near you? If so they usually stock passion fruit at a very reasonable price. The quality is also far superior to the passion fruit at the big chain grocers.

sootiee, LOL So you "escaped it" and had to move to San Diego to do that, huh? :-) LOL That's hilarious! Now I'm really glad that I got rid of mine for sure! :-D

Oh, if I wouldn't have seen how overly zealous the vine is, it would be half tempting to be a passion fruit farmer, but oh my goodness, I think I'm getting a headache just thinking about how far those vines would go. I think all of my neighbors would end up hating me! Ha. Seriously, if a neighbor of mine would grow it and it would end up over here, I'd be disgruntled. I know I have a neighbor two houses away that at some point planted some variegated vinca and now it's growing into our yard. Just what I need, another weed! :/

I never in my life ate a passion fruit, but you make them sound really tasty.

Cathy