Garden History
The flamboyant flowering of Campsis radicans made it inescapable to even the least botanically-minded of the first English colonists in Virginia; consequently the plant quickly made its way to England, early in the 17th century, though its botanical parentage, as a hardy member of a mostly subtropical group, made its naming problematic: according to John Parkinson, the Virginia settlers were at first calling it a jasmine or a honeysuckle, and then a bellflower; he classed it an Apocynum (dogbane). Joseph Pitton de Tournefort erected a catch-all genus Bignonia in 1700, from which it has since been extricated.
Away from summer heat, C. radicans is less profuse of flower. A larger-flowered hybrid "Mme Galen" was introduced about 1889 by the Tagliabue nurserymen of Laniate near Milan.
The form C. radicans f. flava has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.
Read more about this topic: Campsis Radicans
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