I came home today to find two of my flower beds completely covered in this stuff.....
there was one funky looking bloom that was like an orange leaf with weird oblong red seed looking things.... to me it screamed "poisonous". I should find another and take a photo...
but here is the vine...
I found it's Balsam Apple vine - Momordica charantia
That is a very invasive vine, rip it out and if you find root base, dig it up. I see it all over everything when I go walking. It took over a friend of mine's garden, she can't get rid of it now.
in our sandy soil, it does pull up easily.
I wonder if using Preen when i leave next May will help keep most of it from growing.
I will certainly keep up with the seedlings that i find in the yard.
Found this same thing way up in my oak near ponds. Yanked down what I could and dug up root out of ground.
Thought it was gold finger so I let it grow. Now I know better I'll never let it get a start again.
Thanks tcs for bringing this to our attention.
Bonnie
Oh no, I hate this stuff! I know a place where it has covered an entire hedge of bougainvillea utterly choking everything in its path, you cannot even SEE what used to be under it! It moves FAST too.
learn to recognize the leaves and pull up vine before it blooms. Birds will carry seeds all around the yard.
hollyhock... that is what I came home to after 5 months of being away.... my back flower bed - all the shrubs were completely covered.
now that I know what it looks like.... i'll hopefully be able to keep it in check.
It likes to disguise itself within other vines, I swear sometimes these invasive vines have a brain.☺
Yes and they grow better than what we plant that we want to grow.
I found more in backyard now all in a beautiful crepe myrtle that was blooming good. Another job on the horizon.
tcs, I hear ya! It's taken over a 400-600' expanse along a roadway near me and we all used to think a bougainvillea would go crazy left unattended but THIS stuff even "eats" (covers, strangles) out the bougainvillea! In another month you won't be able to even SEE the bougainvillea, I bet.
I'm pulling up the neighbor's "sprouts" of this stuff IN MY YARD as soon as I see it. Tempted to use Round-up on some empty beds and leave them a while until I'm sure all of this is gone. The blooming/seeding stuff on the neighbor's bougainvillea will undoubtedly keep coming over to my property (birds, as someone said), so I'm afraid once ONE person in the area doesn't deal with this problem, everyone else will suffer trying to fend it off from taking over THEIR property. Sigh.
