Porcelain-berries are among nature\u2019s most beautiful fruits\u2014shiny in jewel-like shades of lilac and azure to dark blue-purple, with speckles that make them look like little Easter eggs.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In short, Ampelopsis brevipedunculata, the woody porcelain-berry vine, is a beauty.<\/p>\n
Sadly, for such a lovely thing, it is extremely invasive.\u00a0 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\u2019s.\u00a0 I am sure it was originally \u201cplanted\u201d by a passing bird that had feasted on the berries.\u00a0 Now the porcelain-berry lives in the privet hedge in an unholy and strangling alliance with Chinese wisteria, honeysuckle and oriental bittersweet.\u00a0 Sometimes poison ivy works its way in as well.\u00a0 Once a month or so, I fight the good fight and try to pull out as much as I can.\u00a0 At least this slows the porcelain-berry.<\/p>\n
Like so many garden plants, it came from elsewhere\u2014northeast Asia to be exact\u2014in the 1870\u2019s.\u00a0 Its value as an ornamental plant was obvious immediately.\u00a0 Its invasive qualities manifested themselves later.\u00a0 Now, we in the eastern United States are stuck with it.\u00a0 To compound the problem, some retailers still sell porcelain-berry as an ornamental.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Porcelain-berry makes me wish that I were better at botanical illustration, because it would make a lovely subject.\u00a0 It would be much more satisfactory framed and hanging on the living room wall than unfettered and working its way through the privet hedge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Porcelain-berries are among nature\u2019s most beautiful fruits\u2014shiny in jewel-like shades of lilac and azure to dark blue-purple, with speckles that make them look like little Easter eggs.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In short, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[337,338,154,153,336,339],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","tag-ampelopsis","tag-grape-family","tag-invasive-plants","tag-invasive-vines","tag-porcelain-berry","tag-removing-invasive-vines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":569,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}