Mountain Fringe In My New Garden: Wildflower Wednesday

Can you name a biennial vine native to North America? (Great trivia question!)If you read the words above, you know the answer is mountain fringe (Adlumia fungosa), more commonly known as Allegheny vine–but that’s not as poetic. I first discovered mountain fringe growing in moist, shady spots in my former garden. As I mentioned in my previous post on this pretty and unusual plant, I’ve never been able to grow it from seed. I just have to wait for it to show up.

This vine was meant to climb up shrubs. It looks like it belongs in the lilac pictured above. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that birds eat the seeds and “plant” them under the shrubs they perch in. But that’s just a hypothesis on my part; don’t quote me.Without a shrub to climb, mountain fringe weaves itself up through the nearest plants and then scrambles over the tops of them, searching for something that will take it up. The vine that showed up in the Front Walk South bed managed to take down the wind chimes hanging on a shepherd’s crook and wrestled a belladonna delphinium to a horizontal position. Yet it looks like such a delicate thing.

Truthfully, these two vines are the most vigorous I’ve ever seen. I should have cut the vine back when I saw it going for the delphinium, but I just didn’t get to it in time. And when you know it’s a biennial, that this is its one season of glory and it will be dead at the end of the year, it’s easy to be indulgent and let it have its way.

Posted for Wildflower Wednesday, created by Gail of Clay and Limestone, to share wildflowers/native plants no matter where you garden in the blogasphere. “It doesn’t matter if we sometimes show the same plants. How they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most. It’s always the fourth Wednesday of the month!”