Growing Vertical with the Top Five Native Vines for Pollinators

Native vines are a totally underused plant in Mid-Atlantic gardens. Filling gaps, covering walls and fences, and a great vertical element in any garden, vines can be used to attract native butterflies and insects to your garden. Vines are useful if you don’t have a ton of vertical room and usually grow quickly and form almost instant screens.

Pipevine caterpillar on Dutchman’s Pipe

For instance, the pipevine swallowtail feeds on Dutchman’s Pipe, Aristolochia macrophylla, which is a valuable woody vine that can cover a huge area quickly, a season or less. Useful as a screening vine, it is a snap to grow. Another native, Trumpet Honeysuckle,  Lonicera sempervirens, is frequently visited by hummingbirds and long-tongued insect pollinators (e.g., white-lined sphinx moth). And Wisteria frutescens, Amethyst Falls, is a better behaved version of the rampant Asian Wisteria, which I have found growing inside houses through basement windows! 

Here are my top 5 picks:

1. Trumpet Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)
   Native to the eastern United States from southern Maine to Florida and westward to Illinois and Texas. Related to the highly invasive Amur Honeysuckle, Lonicera maackii, and Japanese Honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica.

Trumpet Honeysuckle is a versatile and beautiful vine that comes in several colors. Noted for its 1- to 2-inch-long tubular flowers that appear in late spring or early summer, it is a magnet for hummingbirds, bees and butterflies. Under ideal growing conditions, it will put on a second flush of blooms in the fall. Flowers turn into orange to red berries in late summer and fall which birds love to feast on.

Needing support with a fence or trellis, this vines grab hold and start to grow without tying in. The only downside is this honeysuckle doesn’t have the wonderful scent of the invasive species.

Common ones found in the trade include ‘John Clayton’, which features yellow flowers and grows only 7 to 10 feet long; ‘Major Wheeler’, a floriferous cultivar with deep red flowers and very good mildew resistance; ‘Fragrant Cloud’ and ‘Magnifica’, a compact vine with crimson flowers with orange lips.

2. Pipevine (Aristolochia macrophylla)

Native to the Appalachian Mountains from New York to Tennessee, but can also be found sporadically from Maine to Alabama.

Pipevine, also called Dutchman’s pipe, is a woody vine that is most easily identified by its large heart-shaped leaves. This vine can provide a dense screen of foliage to a porch or arbor from early May to October. Since the vine can get quite heavy, choose your supporting structure with care.

It has very interesting pipe-shaped, mahogany-colored flowers that appear in mid-May to June and actually resemble pipes! These are usually hidden under the leaves but are worth searching for.

Pipevine is the host plant for caterpillars of the pipevine swallowtail butterfly and can reach 30′ in length! So place this one carefully with good support.

3. Wisteria (Wisteria frutescens ‘Amethyst Falls’

A superior selection of our little-known native wisteria, this deciduous vine is really special and not many people know about it. Much less aggressive than the Asian variety which many people are more familiar with, it is a dainty vine that grows slowly but surely to cover a vertical structure. Consider it to be a dwarf version of the exotic Asian behemoth that can quickly cover and undermine buildings. ‘Amethyst Falls’ is the named variety and it is a charmer.

Lightly fragrant, lavender-purple, and borne in cascading 4- to 6-inch racemes in May and June, I have it growing on my pergola. Great for containers as well, I see this variety offered up more and more at local nurseries. Deer resistant and drought tolerant, everyone with a small or large garden should have room for this great plant.

It is a host plant for the Marine Blue butterfly, Silver-spotted skipper, and Long-tailed skipper.

4. Carolina Jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens)

A stunning bright yellow vine to brighten an early spring landscape, this vine covers fences and trees in open woodlands in the Southeast region. The State flower of South Carolina, it does quite well here in Maryland too. Growing to 20 feet or more, some people also grow it as a ground cover. Sweetly scented, the golden yellow flowers cover the vine so you can barely see the foliage, in April in my area, earlier in the south. The trumpet shaped flowers last for several weeks, and you can cut it back after flowering to keep it contained in a smaller area.

Attracting hummingbirds, butterflies (Spicebush Swallowtail Butterfly) and bees to its fragrant flowers, every part of the plant is poisonous. One important warning: The flowers produce nectar that is toxic to honeybees if consumed in sufficient quantities and honey produced from its nectar may be toxic to humans. This is also true of Rhododendron flowers. Very deer resistant, the vine is easy to grow and evergreen!

5. Bignonia Capreolata (Cross Vine)

Native to the south-eastern US, this show stopping vine is very tropical looking, smothered in cluster of exotic flowers that smell of mocha, and rarely grown. Using tendrils for support, like an ivy vine, this beautiful vine can quickly grow up supports like fences and trees to make a great display. Heavily flowering on a woody vine, this deciduous vine can grow to 30 to 50 feet, so site it carefully.

Cross Vine grows well in shade to full sun (blooms more profusely in the sun), and might die back to the ground in severe winters. The roots are hardy though and will sprout new growth the following spring. Tolerating a wide variety of conditions, the vine blooms in early spring in my mid-Atlantic region in mid to late May. Providing excellent foraging for traveling hummingbirds, it is an early nectar source for native pollinators of all sorts.