Friday, December 3, 2010

The Cypress Vine ( Ipomoea quamoclit)

When I first saw the Cypress Vine  many years back, I thought it was such a beautiful plant with the lacy delicate fresh green leaves and bight red flower shaped in a star.  When we first move here, I wanted to have some fast growing plant to cover up the fence for some greenery in order to have some shade and privacy. This is a  very fast growing plant which is robust and can withstand  the hot weather without getting all scorched despite its rather delicate looking leaves when it started growing. Also it is a fast bloomer and within a month of growth or so, the plant will be blooming...very pretty indeed.  The down side of this plant is it can  be rather invasive as the many thousands of flowers all bear seeds that can start growing  anywhere .......! 

After I had the  Rangon Creeper ( posted June 24 2010) growing very well,  sadly I  had to remove this plant as there is really no space around the fence area.  By then  the plant  was  also showing  rapid  browning and not so healthy anymore. Any gardener will know it  can be a mess to pull out vines !   I presumed this plant has a short life span or perhaps due to the hot and dry spell,  they  started to dry up.  It  was  not easy to  just remove  certain brown parts of the plants as they are all entangled up. In the end I just removed the  whole mess of vegetation  entangled to the fence and the seeds all just dropped to the ground as I cut and  removed parts of the plant bit by bit.....!    Till today  young plants  continue to  shoot up  around  the areas where I had  planted this plant.  I have to keep removing them as I see them.   Perhaps I should try to grow the Cypress Vine in a pot and twined it around some sticks and see whether it can be tamed. ......well just a passing thought, as I do like the lacy leaves and attractive red flowers.....

2 comments:

James David said...

cypresss vine are so beautiful.
In order to conceal the dry unattractive parts - you can trim and keep the plant small, or you can run with your hand and strip all the the dry part and leave the green side.

Im not so patient in growing it by seed, rather I take it as cutting and place it in a hangging pot. When it over grows & become ugly - I just cut & trim keeping it bushy and neat.

Sun-ni Mi-ni Gardener said...

Wow, what an excellent idea....Yes I must try it...there are still many baby plants sprouting up despite having removed the mother plants almost a year ago....!