Just based on the flower picture, it looks like Japanese wisteria, Wisteria foribunda. These flowers open incrementally from the base to the tip. You can confirm that with the vining habit - Japanese wisteria vines counterclock-wise, Chinese and the non-invasive American species vines clock-wise. Japanese wisteria is considered invasive over a wide area of the east coast, including as far north as Maine. It spreads by root shoots, rooting stem nodes and by seed. Pruning can certainly help to contain it but will not elimintate the spread in areas where it is so inclined. Flora, not sure why it is not invasive in your area (nor in mine). Since we share a pretty long and mild growing season and given the ease with which this plant spreads, one would think it would be popping up everywhere! I am thinking it is because of our cool summers not allowing for sufficient ripening of the seeds. It certainly spreads from the roots easily enough here, but that pretty much restricts it to one's own garden.

So, from the feedback I've gotten since I bought this plant I think i'm going to return it to Highland today. They didn't tell me it wasn't good to plant near other stuff when I asked. When I got this plant I was looking for one I saw in someone's yard. It's a vine with white lacy flowers in little round umbrella shapes. It's growing on someone's chainlink fence in south minneapolis. (she has a lovely garden in general) It is blooming now or at least was last week and was very full and vigorous looking. I don't think it was any kind of hydrangea because it's blooming now. It also looked less woody than that. Anyone have a clue? I would love to know what this is! At any rate it's not a silver lace vine...

Well.....kind of. Purpling isn't an "all purpose" response to stress in general. It only happens in response to certain types of stress. If you chill a plant, or deprive it of sunlight, or cause mechanical injury, and it survives, it's not going to react by turning purple like a bruise after the fact. Nor will water stress alone make a plant purple. An attack from a fungal pathogen in many cases will make it purple. (as well as certain nutrient difficies, nutrient excess toxicities, response to mis-application of chemicals, etc.) However, I will grant you this: You still may be correct. If it were lesions from an abiotic source, it is possible that saphrophytes have moved in to feed on the dead tissue and the plant is responding to those where they make contact with still-living leaf tissue. (although that would only address the purpling immediatley adjacent to the lesions) But, when you stack up purple splotches and rings surrounding dead spots along with all the other clues, they point to a fungal pathogen as the the most likely candidate for the primary source of stress for this plant.

I know what you mean. Mine did the same thing. But mine was past the starting to grow, it was already covering the shed again this spring and had some early flowers on it and did the same thing yours did. We cut outs back all the way down but the wood is green underneath also. We had some tiny little shoots start growing at the bottom but it's not really doing anything. Our's is also planted on south side of our shed but it grew like the dickens last year. I've heard they can do sun or shade and I've seen them grow in both so I just don't know what's up with it. Mine died before it even got hot. I called my local garden center and described the problem and said there were other people in other zones that the same thing happened. They didn't really know. They thought maybe some kind of root damage or fungus. So I guess I'll just plant another. Darn it.... Lora