Trumpet Plant
Essential Facts About The Popular And Pretty Trumpet Plant
The campsis, known as trumpet plant or trumpet creeper is in the bignoniaceae family. It is a deciduous vine, or in warm areas, semi-evergreen.
The trumpet plant is extremely fast growing: A vine that provides a quick screen grown on a trellis, during summer months. It has vibrant orange, red or yellow flowers that give it the name, as they are trumpet shaped. It flowers prolifically from midsummer to the fall.
This vine has aerial rootlets that will cling to almost anything - cement, wood, bricks, etc. You should pinch off new green growth in the summer, to keep it bushy, or it will get long and thin. Prune back at the end of growing season to prevent top heaviness that will let it topple over or even pull down attached support.
One common type of trumpet plant is the campsis granifloa or bignonia chinensis. It’s known as a Chinese trumpet plant. This type does best in zones 4 to 24 and is not the most fast growing variety. However, its flowers are a deeper color, usually red. Flowers are larger than the type that is native to America. Within this type, the morning charm has peachy colored flowers. Chinese trumpets grow up to 30 feet.
Growing in zones 1 to 24 is the common trumpet creeper, i.e. campsis radicans or begnonia radican. It comes from the eastern part of the United States and is common in very cold areas. The common creeper will go dormant but reliably come back each spring. This one has orange flowers with scarlet centers that can be 2 inches wide and quite spectacular. It is fast growing, up to 40 feet long. Another variety of common trumpet plant is the flava, with yellow flowers.
There is a third type of trumpet vine called campsis tagliabuana, growing in zones 3 b to 24. This one is a hybrid of the Chinese and common trumpets. The variety called mme galen is most often seen, with salmon red flowers. There is also a variety called crimson trumpet, with pure red flowers.
In a totally different family, distictis, but also bignoniaceae, are the blood red, royal and vanilla trumpet vines with traits as follows.
Blood Red: Distictis buccinatoria, grows in zones 8, 9, and 14 to 24. Has orangey red flowers that change to blue-red (thus the name “blood red”). The flower center is yellow and 4 inches long.
Royal: Found in zone 16, 21 to 24 and H1-2. Flowers are mauve or purpose with a yellow or orange center.
Vanilla: Named for fragrance, as well as color. They are violet, and then change to lavender, and finally to white. This variety is valued because it does not require as much pruning as the others.
As you can see, there is a type of trumpet vine for everybody. They are one of the easiest to grow and most versatile vines. Trumpet vines are valuable because of their fast growth habit and their extreme vigor in most climates.