Sweet Potato Vine Flower

Many ornamentals are also sterile and only really viable to produce from cuttings.

Sweet potato vine flower.

Ornamental sweet potato vines don t produce many flowers which means they often don t produce seeds. They are bred for the beauty of their leaves rather than edible tubers and the vines from these plants make them look more like a morning glory or clematis than a member of the potato family. The ornamental varieties are simply cultivars of the species plant. One of the easiest ways to create multi seasonal interest in the garden is to use plants with interesting foliage.

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. A vigorous annual or a tender perennial it takes off in summer heat. The ornamental sweet potato plant ipomoea butatas is somewhat different from its southern grown vegetable sibling. Typically used as spillers in containers they also make fantastic groundcovers typically spreading 4 to 6 feet.

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. 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.