Sweet Potato Vine Flower

One of the easiest ways to create multi seasonal interest in the garden is to use plants with interesting foliage.

Sweet potato vine flower.

Many ornamentals are also sterile and only really viable to produce from cuttings. A vigorous annual or a tender perennial it takes off in summer heat. Sweet potato vine ipomoea batatas named for its edible cousin is an ornamental warm season annual grown for its attractive leaves and vining habit the foliage lends a tropical feel to the garden and comes in a range of colors and varying forms. The ornamental varieties are simply cultivars of the species plant.

While it does produce edible sweet potato tubers albeit not very palatable and bitter the ornamental variety bears more colorful foliage making it a popular houseplant. Ornamental sweet potato vines don t produce many flowers which means they often don t produce seeds. While you may be able to coax your plant into producing sweet potato vine seeds they aren t guaranteed to be good so it s best to propagate in other ways. Gardeners turn to the sweet potato vine for its ability to power through just about anything while bringing interesting shapes sizes and colors to a pot or plot.

Edible sweet potato vines and some ornamental varieties bloom with flowers that resemble morning glories in shape but some ornamental sweet potato vines do not flower according to missouri. Typically used as spillers in containers they also make fantastic groundcovers typically spreading 4 to 6 feet.