Spanish Flag Vine
Each day for the past couple of weeks I've walked by one or two of my plantings of Spanish Flag vine (Ipomoea lobata) and thought "wow, this looks better than it did yesterday -- I should take some photos!". It just seems to keep getting better though.
The flowers seem more vibrant, and there are tons of them now. When the light hits them right, you just have to stop and admire the intense blooms -- there's no walking past this one!
Even where there are only a few blooms, such as the trellis on the south side of my house, the gradient of colors from red to yellow to white is just amazing:
The tubular flowers really attract the hummingbirds, even though only the bottom couple of flowers are open:
I think they only last a day or so, then fall off:
The next flowers up (which are now the bottom flowers) open up, and the cycle repeats for weeks (or months). Like most annual vines, it's really vigorous too, producing tons of flowers and sprawling wherever it can. Here I let them grow over some sedges which were struggling here, and they've formed a thick, beautiful bed of color:
That's really dramatic and impressive, isn't it? I love it!
They've also gotten a little out of hand, growing over this chair (didn't I say a couple of months ago that I needed to pull the vines off of the chairs?):
also climbing up into the Japanese maple:
They are making it up onto the pergola as I intended:
but not quite as thickly as I had hoped. Here's a better view:
Even with the disappointing overhead growth, this plant is really satisfying:
Just beautiful! It's a good thing that I like it so much too, because I'm going to have it forever -- it does seem to reseed quite readily.
With flowers like this though, I'll gladly pull up a few unwanted seedlings every year. I just need to find more things to let these vines grow onto.
