i have had purple leaf plums in MI for ... well... forever.. i never saw a seedling ... but i have seen crabapple seedlings that are red ... is that possible from a botanical view?? ken ps: in fact. the only purple leaf plum.. that ever plummed for me... did the year before it up and died ... i never stopped to wonder why?... MI winters??? .. it flowered reliably.. but never set fruit???? i always assumed it was a last ditch effort at propagating the species... and that was 20 odds years ago .... man.. the flashbacks are going to start again ... lol ...

Thanks to everyone who responded. I am 100% it is not Virginia Creeper. We have VC here and while it can be a bit of a nuisance, it grows nowhere near as fast as this stuff. VC's more mature vines are also somewhat "woody", but this vine is very tender everywhere. After ya'll pointed out the similarities between this vine and VC I googled "Vitaceae" (VC family), but found nothing of any use. This vine has yet to make any berries, fwiw. I feel sure this stuff will get killed back with the first frost we get, but I'm sure that when it warms back up in the spring, it will come back from it's roots and continue its rapid growth. It's roots are tuber like, and I'm guessing that if someone were to try and till these vines up, they would have a bigger problem than before. I think I'll post this in the "weeds" section of this site and see if anyone knows over there. Thanks again for everyone's input.

By Jove, I think you got it! "Johnson Grass" look out -this means war(G). Thank you all so much for your help! Hi, Scents from Heaven, miss you too. I'm on Facebook mostly now, if any of you use it, please look me up so we can keep in touch better. Lisa

In the lawn, a tough competitor. But not even on the same page for overall destructiveness as garlic mustard or buckthorn-two plants that can prevent tree seedlings from developing on the forest floor. This one can't do anything like that, not even close. Which brings me to the subject of how everyone seems to have their own version of "invasive species". For some, they think that is just any plant-native or not-with aggressive ability to colonize a site. For others, it's a plant that can naturalize in the landscape, whether it is causing any problems or not. In reality, true invasive exotic species are those which can and do replace whole native plant communities, things like common buckthorn and garlic mustard...things where, once they get going, the total nature of the site is completely altered and simplified...usually down to just that one species. I've had Glechoma in my lawn forever. A few times, I've went through the trouble of controlling it, and this can be done as I covered above. Right now, it's back in full force, having crept in from the sides, but since I now suddenly have three grandchildren that do or will be playing on our grass, I've withheld the phenoxy stuff. I'll live with the ground ivy for now, and in fact, there is one thing I've always actually liked about it-the minty fresh smell whenever I cut the lawn. But to lump this one in with the bad invasives is just misguided. +oM