Our Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) is currently putting on a spectacular show.
Autumn colour is a variable thing, every year is different and I never know what the season will bring, which is part of the charm of gardening.
One year my Korean pear tree (Pyrus fauriei ‘Korean Sun’) makes the best display, then next autumn it might be the Claret Ash (Fraxinus ‘Raywoodii’), and sometimes our ornamental grape (Vitis) surpasses anything else I grow.
Its incredible, rich crimson autumn colour can make other autumn colouring plants look almost insipid.
The combination of autumn rainfall with the onset of colder nights triggers the changing leaf colour, and the annual variation in climate causes the differences in timing, depending on a plant’s individual preference.
True Virginia Creeper, from the eastern United States, is a deciduous, woody vine with dark green leaves consisting of three to five oval, radiating leaflets, to 10 centimetres in length.
It is a powerful, strapping vine, capable of climbing 30 metres by twining up a support, or by clinging with small adhesive discs that develop as it matures. (A similar species, P. inserta, has no discs.)
It looks its best, I think, on a wall with horizontal supports that enable it to hang down in curtains when fully grown, but it’s also a lovely vine for a pergola.
Its incredible, rich crimson autumn colour can make other autumn colouring plants look almost insipid.
The vine was introduced to Britain by John Tradescant the Elder from the new colony of Virginia, along with Swamp Cypress, Red Maple and the low-growing perennial Moses in the Bullrushes (Tradescantia) that bears his name.
Virginia Creeper’s botanical name, Parthenocissus, literally means virgin ivy but bears little relation to the plant as it certainly isn’t sterile, indeed it was originally classified as Ampelopsis and carries attractive, bloomy black berries in autumn.
Its current name commemorates the American colony that was named for Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen.
According to the Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening, in the wild Virginia Creeper favours damp soils in woodland, but in Europe it has escaped from gardens and naturalised on walls and wasteland.
I can vouch for this as last October I saw, from a speeding bus in Bulgaria, a long, mixed hedge completely submerged under a sheet of brilliant red Virginia Creeper.
It was just one of those moments that go to make up the best holidays and lodge in your mind’s eye for ever.
Luckily Australia is almost certainly far too dry to be in any danger of a similar invasion and the government does not currently list Parthenocissus as a weed (www.environment.gov.au/)
A couple of other species of Parthenocissus are commonly seen in cultivation, clinging Boston Ivy (P. tricuspidata) and twining P. henryana. Both colour later in autumn; although mine are now still green.
Boston Ivy has shiny, mid green, maple-like leaves (20cm. x 20 cm.), and will romp up a large wall with ease and speed with no means of support.
P. henryana is much less vigorous, with glossy green leaves with silvery veins.
All these climbers are easy to grow but need extra water in dry, hot weather, so common in our summers.
