Porcelain-berries are among nature’s most beautiful fruits—shiny in jewel-like shades of lilac and azure to dark blue-purple, with speckles that make them look like little Easter eggs. The berries appear on long, vigorous vines with medium green, deeply dissected leaves that remind me a bit of wild grape, to which it is related. In short, Ampelopsis brevipedunculata, the woody porcelain-berry vine, is a beauty.
Sadly, for such a lovely thing, it is extremely invasive. I know this because I just dragged about one hundred linear feet of it out of the hedge that divides my property from my neighbor’s. I am sure it was originally “planted” by a passing bird that had feasted on the berries. Now the porcelain-berry lives in the privet hedge in an unholy and strangling alliance with Chinese wisteria, honeysuckle and oriental bittersweet. Sometimes poison ivy works its way in as well. Once a month or so, I fight the good fight and try to pull out as much as I can. At least this slows the porcelain-berry.
Like so many garden plants, it came from elsewhere—northeast Asia to be exact—in the 1870’s. Its value as an ornamental plant was obvious immediately. Its invasive qualities manifested themselves later. Now, we in the eastern United States are stuck with it. To compound the problem, some retailers still sell porcelain-berry as an ornamental. Those who sell it should be sentenced to having to get rid of it in the natural areas where it has migrated and enveloped everything in its path.
Porcelain-berry makes me wish that I were better at botanical illustration, because it would make a lovely subject. It would be much more satisfactory framed and hanging on the living room wall than unfettered and working its way through the privet hedge.