The Original Mystery Plant
Dr. John Nelson

Photo by Linda Lee

A "vine" is any crawling or climbing plant. The word "vine" comes from an old Latin word that suggests a grape vine. Throughout the world, there are hundreds of species of plants, within many completely unrelated plant families, which are truly viny. Vines are often woody. Woody vines that are true climbers-rather than crawlers or "scramblers"- have a fancy name...and that is "liana."

Here in the Southeast, we have plenty of lianas, including all of our local wild grapes, but also yellow jessamine, Virginia creeper, poison ivy, English ivy, clematis, confederate jasmine, cat-brier, supplejack, wisteria, and Japanese honeysuckle (the worst weed of them all!).

There are also plenty of herbaceous vines, whose tissues are soft, and rather easily cut or broken. Gourds and their relatives, watermelons and cucumbers, are common in vegetable patches, and beautiful blooms are commonly grown from morning glories and golden black-eyed-susan.

Kudzu, the well-known pest, is a member of the bean family. Vines owe their climbing skill to a variety of techniques. Some are twining, with young stem tips wrapping around their plants. Some vines have tendrils for the same purpose, and still others have specialized holdfasts or grips. English ivy climbs by means of aerial roots, whereas crossvine and its relatives have specialized leaflets, threadlike and clinging.

Photo by Linda Lee

The mystery plant is a native woody vine with dark green, egg-shaped leaves. It's at home in shady, wet swamps from South Carolina to northern Florida and east Texas, and then again north through the Mississippi valley. It has a few species that are native to western Africa.

It climbs by means of twining stems tips. It's a member of the buckwheat family. Small flowers produce narrowly winged fruits with the old floral parts remaining attached and dried. Each fruit contains a single seed. The dried, hanging fruits have been fancifully compared to jewelry, and they are quite pretty.

Answer to last week's mystery plant

Swamp milkweed, Asclepias perennis

Dr. John Nelson is the curator of the USC Herbarium.

To learn more about the Herbarium, call him at

777-8196. His department also offers free plant identification.

www.herbarium.org