The Vinery

Overview: The Vinery hosts a large collection of ornamental vines clambering over not only the latticework but also the large 19th Century English ship's anchor that was found off the coast of St. Augustine in 1939. The species displayed include passion flowers, jasmines, lace fern, honeysuckles, and pelican flower vines.

A closer look: Vining is an enterprise that has enjoyed great evolutionary success as evidenced by its independent appearance in many unrelated plant groups. Even such unlikely contenders as palms, cacti and ferns have some vining forms in their ranks. The success of this vocational approach is attributable to one principal advantage: It confers the opportunity to maintain a photosynthetic presence in the high light intensity afforded by great stature but without the metabolic expense of producing the necessary support tissue. By spacing its leaves along longer and more pliant stems, a vine can potentially grow taller, but the potential can only be realized if these necessarily weaker stems are externally supported. There are several modes of attachment. Twiners, such as honeysuckle, weave their way upward by looping and twisting their supple stems. Others, like grapes and passion flowers, employ spring-like hooks called tendrils to provide points of attachment. Trumpet creeper, poison ivy and others attach by means of aerial ‘roots’ that arise directly from the stem. This offers the advantage of direct adherence to vertical surfaces that are beyond the grasp of most twiners and tendril climbers. There are many fence riders on the path to vinedom. Our native climbing buckthorn grows as a leggy shrub when no host is at hand and as a woody vine when support is available. These transitional forms are evidence that evolution is an ongoing process. Only with the passage of time may these species more fully commit themselves to one path or the other.