National Geographic Magazine/Volume 31/Number 6/Our State Flowers/The Trumpet Vine

The Trumpet Vine (Bignonia radicans L.)


Who that has studied the enthusiasm with which that frail and filmy creature, the ruby-throated humming-bird, flits from flower to flower of the trumpet vine, burying its head and shoulders deep in the enveloping petals as it strives to drain the last drop from the floral honey cup, or who that has observed closely the constant effort of the trumpet flower to captivate this capricious, swift-winged beauty can doubt the community of interest between them. When Audubon came to paint his plate showing the ruby-throats in life colors, he portrayed them hovering about a cluster of the trumpet vine's flowers.

Kentucky has made the trumpet vine her State flower, and few States can boast of such a brilliant member of the sisterhood of emblematic blossoms. Growing on a vine that has as much vitality as a Lexington thoroughbred and as much resourcefulness in holding its own in the gruelling free-for-all race for existence as any star of the turf, the trumpet flower is well beloved by those who live within the Blue Grass State and by a host who enjoy no such fortune.

Except in the West, the vine is no blatant intruder in places where it is not wanted and never drives the careful farmer distracted by a disposition to preëmpt land which he dedicates to grass. Rather it seeks the moist rich wood and thicket, desiring only to have its chance to survive in this habitat without intruding upon every kind of landscape. Invited to do so by the lover of flowers, it willingly comes out of the woods and forms a delightful arbor for any porch. Sometimes, in parts of the country where it did not originally grow wild, it lives as an “escape” from the portico arbor of the well-kept home. It begins to flower in August and seeds in September. From Jersey's shores to the Mississippi's banks, from the Lakes to the Gulf, it finds hospitable soil and genial weather.

Were it human, the trumpet vine would perhaps not be loved so well. Its instincts of survival are so strong that it does not hesitate to trample upon the rights of weaker neighbors in its efforts to reach the top. Sometimes its aërial rootlets carry it upward or onward until it has stalks as much as 40 feet long. Ever reaching up and striving for a place with the elect of the plant world, it would be in danger of being called a “social climber”; but as a flower we can admire its determination to win its place in the unhampered room at the top.

Source: —, ed. (June 1917), “Our State Flowers: The Floral Emblems Chosen by the Commonwealths”, The National Geographic Magazine 31(6): 495. (Illustration from page 509.)