Yellow passionvine – Passiflora lutea is a native vine that can me more than aggressive. It doesn’t produce the large showy flowers of its sister Passionflower Passiflora incarnata
– but if you look closely, the flowers resemble the larger one but in miniature
and it is a greenish yellow color. Following bloom, you don’t get a large egg-shaped fruit but a small round orb which starts out green and ripens to black. The birds eat some of the seeds and scatter them, and what remains, helps to self-sow. I have them coming up in a number of my ornamental shrub beds, scattered amidst azaleas, camellias and more. I consider it a noxious weed, but some naturalists wax poetic about it and its benefits to bees, butterflies and birds. This native perennial is equally at home in sun and shade.
Castor Bean – Ricinus communis
is a summer annual plant in the spurge or euphorbia family (think poinsettia). The plant is poisonous and showy at the same time. The large palmate leaves come in both green and red forms,
and can form a large showy foliage plant growing upwards of 8-10 feet tall or more in one season. The flowers are somewhat insignificant, but the resulting red, spiny fruits are quite showy. All parts of the plants are poisonous, with the seeds being the most poisonous.
The poison ricin is derived from the seed pods. Many gardeners swear by the planting of castor bean plants to ward off gophers and moles. Castor bean is sometimes called mole plant from the practice of placing castor bean seeds in mole runs where the rodents will hopefully eat the seeds and die. n 1995, researchers at Michigan State University reported that a commercial product containing 65 percent castor oil -- the oil extracted from castor beans -- was effective at repelling moles. Castor oil is the main component in many mole deterrent sprays. The effectiveness of these sprays is still up in the air.
Lysimachia ciliate – Fringed Loosestrife
was a plant that stumped everyone. It is a native perennial found in full sun to light shade in wet to moist conditions, and a fertile loamy soil with organic matter. Its habitats include moist to wet areas of deciduous woodlands, swamps, soggy thickets, wet prairies, marshes, seeps, and borders of streams. The yellow flowers bloom in mid-summer to early fall with a few to many flowers open at a time. Plant in wet sites, in bogs, along streams and ponds. It looks nothing like the invasive purple loosestrife plant – Lythrum salicaria(note, different genus)
.