PlantFiles: Flame Vine, Golden Shower, Orange Trumpet Creeper
Pyrostegia venusta

I thought you would like to know that this plant grows well in Cyprus although maybe not quite as fast as I have not found it invasive at all. The winter temperatures can go down to 2-3 deg. centigrade at night but more usually 9 deg. (Jan to March) Day time temperatures average about 15 deg. I mention this because I have seen a hardiness map which says the plant likes temps. above 20 deg. cent. I have it as an arch over the gate and it has been in full bloom since November and is just dying now. It's a beautiful sight and attracts many comments. I first saw it growing on the wild on the roadsides in Mauritius and searched for on to grow in Cyprus as I did not think it would like my other garden in London!

Wow, what a mistake I made. I bought this vine from a local nursery, because I thought it would be easy to train without its becoming invaisive. I was even proud of myself because I thought I'd found something that would give me trumpet vine colors without the invasive qualities. Not only is this vine not native to my region, its already causing problems here. Today I plan to rip it out and "round-up" the roots. Before I looked up the vine's invasive qualities, my only negative was that the blossoms rot on the vine rather than falling to the ground, so I had to pluck spent blossoms often to keep the vine attractive. Now I know better. Where I live, I see a lot of vines that quickly grow out of control, so I appreciate any feedback about colorful less aggressive vines.

This plant does well in zone 9a. It will burn back in our occasional freeze, but will come right back out and bloom the next year. It will climb to the top and bloom of whatever it's using for support, even a 60 ft. oak tree.

My wife and I enjoy this plant very much. In fact we built an arbor over our patio so that it can grow up and create a natural sun shade.
I saw one note that mentioned it is very attractive to bees, and such, however, we have never seen any insects or birds feeding at the blooms.

It´s a fast growing climber that requires full sun. It may grow covering the ground, so it will need a support. Keep it away from your shrubs and small trees, because it grows faster and may cover the leaves, blocking the sun and sometimes killing the supporting plant. However, it has wonderful flowers, and blooms vigorously. It grows spontaneously on open fields in the brazilian south-southeast regions.

One side note: there´s a parasite weed of the genus Psittacanthus that has flowers that look like Pyrostegia´s... if you see orange tubular flowers coming from your tree, see if you can find the climbing stem coming from the ground. The parasite doesn´t have this kind of stem. Plus, check if the flower is a closed tube and not just long separate erect petals. The second one is the parasite.