Written by MGV Linda Knight
While visiting the Discovery Gardens Rose Garden, I noticed a Corky-Stemmed Passionflower (Passiflora suberosa) had pushed its tiny, pale yellow-green flower to the top of the perfectly trimmed Dwarf Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria) hedge. Some of us are perfectionists and prefer our hedges to be flawless, but every now and then, it’s good to let the pushy natives have their way.
Important Host Plant
Corky-stemmed passionflower is one of the single most valuable plants you can have for local wildlife. It serves as a primary larval host plant for three iconic butterflies: the Zebra Longwing (Florida’s state butterfly), the Gulf Fritillary, and the Julia butterfly. The caterpillars will safely eat these leaves to grow into chrysalises. The unique, dime-sized greenish-yellow flowers provide nectar year-round for small native bees and helpful predatory wasps. AND, as if that weren’t enough, they provide a veritable feast for birds. After the flowers drop, they produce small green berries that ripen into a deep, blue-black purple. Songbirds love to eat these berries.
Florida Native Vine
Unlike aggressive, invasive vines (such as Kudzu or Air Potato) that smother plants, this native vine has a much more harmonious relationship with your hedges and gardens. It is a relatively small, lightweight vine that lacks heavy, woody trunks that can crush or weigh down a shrub’s branches. The vine uses thin, curly tendrils to anchor itself to the outer twigs. It does not wrap tightly around major branches or strangle them like a constricting vine (such as Wisteria or Honeysuckle) would, and it’s easily trimmed if it starts to cover too much of the top of the shrubs.
So, just maybe it is worth a small landscape imperfection to provide so much benefit to nature!
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Visit the Discovery Gardens, 1951 Woodlea Road, Tavares FL 32778, to view 30 themed demonstration gardens. We’re open Monday-Friday, 9am-4pm, Saturday 9am-3pm. The Master Gardener Volunteers maintain the FFL Plant Collection, which include over 120 native plant species.
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