Napapen, thank you! We replaced the vine my brother mistakenly pulled up. Never had any critters on it until the last few years. I looked online trying to identify that beautiful butterfly and those awful caterpillars that dessimated Mom's beloved passion vine. We didn't plant for the critters, only planted it for Mom. Never could identify it and now you've done it for me. I just spotted a few butterflies this last week, which means that I will soon be spending my evenings out by the front porch picking of caterpillars.

We have trumpetcreeper vine in several places and, while it is more invasive than I like, the hummers do love it. The only place it is under-control is on the arbor down near the driveway gate and mailbox. There I have both the orange and yellow flowered trumpet creepers in unimproved, rock-hard red clay and the only irrigation they get is rainfall. In those conditions they stay fairly small and manageable and I don't have to prune them or anything. During a really prolonged dry spell they may even drop foliage and go dormant, but they always rebound when the rain finally starts falling again. The trumpet creeper plants I have near the house sometimes pop up in places where I don't want them, but I either dig them out, or smother them with cardboard and mulch. I have trumpet creeper planted around our in-ground tornado shelter, which sticks up out of the ground a couple of feet. It doesn't look that great in winter when it is dormant, but in the springtime, the vines totally hide the tornado shelter. Of course, I have to prune it back regularly to keep it from growing across the door. While trumpet creeper is not my favorite vine, I grow it for the wild critters and it is lovely in bloom in August when other plants are struggling in the heat. Another vine the hummers love is American Cross Vine. It is native in Texas and the hummers follow its blooms as they migrate across Texas. Here, the hummers sometimes arrive before my Cross Vine blooms so I can only assume they don't rely on it as they migrate across our state. We have wild honeysuckle in the woods, but I won't plant that kind of honeysuckle in the "civilized" part of our landscape. Here around the house I have a coral honeysuckle called "Pink Lemonade" that the hummers absolutely adore. It is blooming now on the entry arbor that leads into my veggie garden and the hummers are buzzing around it all day long. Dawn

Definitely a Plectranthus 'Mona Lavender', which is a hybrid species created by Ball Growers and plant patented. It is no where near hardy to 25F, and will only take light frosts outdoors here in northern California before being killed to the ground. It only blooms under short day conditions, and typically starts blooming late September or so into November/December here in my garden. I have never heard this called purple passion plant before. There are lots of other interesting Plectranthus species out there, including species such as P. neochilus which is practically everblooming as a ground cover, but also smells like skunks, or the larger growing and minty foliaged P. zuluensis, which has pale lavender flowers all year round in our mediterranean climate. P. ecklonii is very similar in flower to P. 'Mona Lavender', yet larger in all aspects, and only blooms in fall also. They are all great landscape plants for mild climate gardens, but less usefull where it freezes, as most Plectranthus species only bloom once in the fall, and none are very hardy. Several other species are commonly grown as house plants and known as Creeping Charlie, and are also grown outdoors here in coastal California.

Hi, BaconEater. I am aggressively hand pollinating, both with a tiny paintbrush and occasionally by pulling the anther off one flower and rubbing it on the stigma of a bloom on another plant. Even so, about half the blossoms drop off without forming fruit. Of the six vines I have planted, two Red Rover are new, one Purple Possum flowered first then stopped abruptly, one Purple Possom is putting out a flower once a month, and the two Nancy Garrison constantly have around 3 to 6 blooms at a time. Each plant has a drip emitter and a nice thick covering of Gromulch. Each gets a supplemental gallon of water from the rain barrel once every week or two. Earlier in the summer, I gave the four older plants a dose of Grow More 10-52-10 water soluble fertilizer. When planted, I mixed in Mycos innoculant and a bit of slow release citrus fertilizer. I'm also pruning and training the vines for a tidy espalier, because I'm growing them for privacy along the wire fence. That might affect the fruiting. Thanks for the tip about Qualcomm. I'll check out their vines when I'm next on campus.