Opportunist plants lurk in every garden, even those well maintained oases of perfection that routinely knock visitors’ socks off. Some of those opportunists we tag as “weeds”, but others are perfectly respectable plants whose only sin is seeing the main chance and taking it. In fall, some of the most prominent of these plants make their presence known: leaves color up, blossoms open and vining stalks reach so high that they are impossible to ignore. The situation in my garden has gotten to the point where the opportunists have long since won the battle with the more genteel plants and are now going mano a mano with each other.
Let’s start with morning glory or Ipomoea purpurea, specifically an antique variety called ‘Grandpa Ott’s’. It features abundant, heart-shaped leaves and purple flowers with darker purple central “eyes”. Fortunately it is beautiful, because it is everywhere. About fourteen years ago, I planted one package of seeds and I have done absolutely nothing since. Every year, the offspring of the previous year’s morning glories grow right up the trellising that borders my back porch. Once the vines arrive at the top, they twine themselves around the geraniums on the back porch. I have even seen one especially aggressive spreader reach out to embrace a potted oleander.
You might wonder what is wrong with gorgeous flowers making themselves at home on a trellis and porch. Absolutely nothing, though it takes vigilance to keep the morning glory in check. The problem is that now morning glories have sprung up all over the garden, insinuating themselves into roses and other shrubs, popping up optimistically in one of the shade beds and even showing their flowery faces in the front yard. How did this happen? Bird landscaping is the only possibility.
The Virginia creeper–Parthenocissus quinquefolia—a member of the grape family with palmately compound leaves consisting of five leaflets apiece, is a native plant vigorous enough to cover just about anything—arbors, barns, telephone poles and possibly even cell towers. In the fall the leaves turn brilliant red and the plant, which may have gone virtually unnoticed while executing its genetically programmed campaign of world domination, becomes very easy to spot. In my garden, Virginia creeper restricts its activities to infiltrating the privet hedge. In spring, you have to look carefully to see it, but by this time of the year, its tendrils and leaves have emerged to wave above the top of the privet. Just trimming off the waving greenery will do nothing to stop the Virginia creeper. To get rid of it, I have to get right under the hedge and root it out. Immediately after I do so, the birds, who have dined on the creeper’s berries, will immediately fly over the top of the hedge and relieve themselves, guaranteeing another generation of this unstoppable vine.
And if Virginia creeper seeds itself around with wild abandon, sweet autumn clematis—Clematis terniflora–puts it to shame. At my place it not only springs unbidden from flower beds, but appears in the lawn, cheek-by-jowl with the Virginia creeper in the hedge, clinging to the holly tree and even tackling the thorny branches of the flowering quince bush. It is, in short, unstoppable.
Clematis terniflora bursts into bloom, seemingly overnight, in early fall, covering itself with hundreds, if not thousands, of star-shaped flowers. While each one is only about an inch wide, a mature plant in full bloom becomes a sweet-smelling white canopy easily able to climb thirty feet, or form a large clump on the ground. Pollinating insects fly to it by the score. Without the intervention of pruning shears, the vine can grow up to 30 feet tall.
When the clematis blooms fade, they are replaced by feathery silver seed heads that last into the late fall, and add ethereal beauty to the landscape. But that ethereal beauty comes at a price, as the seeds are distributed far and wide. I used to leave the flowerheads on the vines, mostly because I thought they were too numerous to clip off. Now I cut back the vine almost to the ground as the flowers are fading. It’s the only way to enforce planned clematis parenthood.
Virginia creeper’s powers of self-perpetuation and free-ranging disposition prove that even native plants can have invasive tendencies, but because of its native status, it does not show up on invasive plant list. Morning glory and sweet autumn clematis are another story. Both are non-native, with the former at home in Mexico and Central America and the latter in Japan.
Though all three are sold commercially, these opportunists tend to escape domestic situations regularly and light out for wide open spaces like woodland edges, rural hedgerows, wildlife refuges, railroad right-of-ways and other untended spaces. They become problematic when they outcompete native species.
Still, all three are undeniably beautiful, attract pollinators and can work in difficult garden situations. Clematis and creeper even thrive in light shade, with the creeper making an effective erosion controller as well. If you use them, be a wise gardener and remove the faded flowers before the plants set seed. Grub out seedlings that come up in places other than ones where they belong.
And if you pass my front hedge and see me with my head under it, know that I have not lost my mind. I am merely trying to get to the root of the Virginia creeper.