Gelsemium Species, Rankin's Jessamine, Rankin's Trumpetflower, Swamp Jessamine

In zone 8a, urban Northwestern South Carolina, I've grown 2 of these plants for a decade and never watered them. Their best quality is h...Read Moreelping to create visual privacy. During their first year, they bloomed in the fall and spring, but they have barely bloomed in the fall since that first year. Over the decade I've grown them, during several years in the fall, they had 5 blooms, more or less. They bloom later in the spring than Gelsemium sempervirens and growing both might result in a long period of spring flowers. I don't like the later bloom of rankinii because it occurs during the most colorful time of the year when it's color is unnecessary and often clashingly undesirable. I read somewhere that sempervirens was more of an agressive thug than rankinii, and sempervirens is an invasive plant in the city where I live. In my experience, rankinii is also agressive.

Ive had this plant for two years now. Ive been trying to cover a simple arbor with it. Its grown a couple feet, but not a great deal. It...Read More flowers well, but no fragrance. I may put it in a container on my deck and replace the arbor planting with a Carolina Jasmine.

We just planted this in a large pot with a trellis, and it's doing fine. We're in Los Angeles, also known as a desert, so we'll have to w...Read Moreater it. I have two concerns: the salesperson at the large garden chain that sold me this plant called it Carolina Jasmine, but the tag (which I didn't look at) says it's Swamp Jessamine Gelsemium rankinii. When I looked up the Latin name I found that Carolina Jasmine is species sempervirens, not rankinii. Sempervirens has a strong aroma; rankinii does not. The tag also doesn't reveal how toxic Gelsemiums are - alkaloids related to strychnine that can kill honeybees as well as people if eaten.

This is a beautiful hardy plant. I have planted 6 of these vines in two different yards, only one died where it was in bad soil that I h...Read Moread failed to correct in any way. The other two that I planted last spring survived the record high temperatures, the winter drought and record freezing temperatures. Stayed green and had some flowers all winter, by early March they were covered with hundreds of yellow blossoms and are still blooming. They expanded from a small half gallon pot to cover an 8' wide swath of fence, and one has climbed over 12' high where some of it was able to reach a few branches on a crape myrtle tree. I like this vine a lot because it does not damage the fence or house siding the way ivy and wysteria do.