Native Plants

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Sunday - May 04, 2014

From: San Antonio, TX
Region: Southwest
Topic: Shrubs, Vines
Title: Evergreen vine for wall and long-blooming shrubs in San Antonio TX
Answered by: Barbara Medford

QUESTION:

What is a good native vine that stays green all year to plant along a rock courtyard wall? Also what are native bushes that flower for the longest period of time? Thanks.

ANSWER:

We will go to our Recommended Species section, click on Central Texas (on the map) to get this list of native plants recommended for Central Texas. Using the selection list on the left hand side of that page, we will select on "Vine" for HABIT. This selection list has no provision for choosing "evergreen" and you did not mention what amounts of sunlight are available where you want to plant the vines, so those two specifications you will have to learn by following each plant link to our webpage on that plant for information. We will use the same procedure for finding "shrub" under HABIT, again without knowing the sunlight available and looking at each selected shrub to see how long it blooms. You did not mentiion if you wanted evergreen shrubs, but more shrubs tend to be evergreen than do vines.

Evergreen vines for San Antonio: exactly one - Lonicera sempervirens (Coral honeysuckle). There were 11 on the list of vines, but all the rest are deciduous.

Long-blooming shrubs for San Antonio: 28 on the list; for "long-blooming," we chose only those that were shown to bloom 5 months or more, of which there were 9

Anisacanthus quadrifidus var. wrightii (Flame acanthus) - blooms June to October

Chrysactinia mexicana (Damianita) - April to September

Erythrina herbacea (Coralbean) - March to November

Eysenhardtia texana (Texas kidneywood) - May to October

Lantana urticoides (Texas lantana) - April to October

Leucophyllum frutescens (Cenizo) - January to December, depending on rainfall

Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii (Turk's cap or turkscap) - May to November

Pavonia lasiopetala (Rock rose) - April to November

Salvia greggii (Autumn sage) - March to November