A field-to-nursery notebook: foraging native seeds & cuttings across North Carolina, identifying them, and working out how to grow them for a NC Piedmont native-plant nursery.
Bignonia capreolata · Bignoniaceae
Spring's reddish-orange trumpets on a high-climbing tendril vine — spot it in April, collect flat brown pods in late summer.
Community photos of Bignonia capreolata — fix this search image in your eye before the hike (leaf, flower/bract, ripe fruit, bark, whole-plant habit).
Native throughout the NC Coastal Plain and Piedmont, chiefly in bottomlands; infrequent in the Mountains. Present but often overlooked in Person County bottomlands
Best bet: Cuttings are the higher-odds, truer-to-form route: semi-hardwood stem cuttings in June–July under mist (rooting hormone ~3,000–5,000 ppm) root in 4–8 weeks; root cuttings and simple layering work too. Seed is nearly as easy — it needs NO stratification and NO scarification: collect just-browning pods before dehiscence, dry indoors in a paper bag until they crack, shake out the winged seeds, and sow fresh (fall or spring) for ~90% germination in about 3 weeks. Seed only keeps ~1 yr refrigerated, so don't stockpile.
A Piedmont native at home in heavy clay, heat and humidity; sun to part shade, drought-tolerant once established, USDA zones 5–9. Blooms hardest in full sun — shaded plants stay leafy but flower/fruit poorly, so scout sunny edges for seed. Vigorous: climbs 30–50 ft and spreads by both seed and root suckers, so NC Extension rates it 'weedy/aggressive' — give it a stout support and pull suckers to keep it in bounds. It is a well-behaved native, not an exotic invasive, but do not plant it expecting a tidy, non-suckering vine.
Crossvine is easiest to pin down in April and May, when clusters of two-inch reddish-orange-to-brick-red trumpets — yellow-throated and faintly mocha-scented — light up forest edges and the crowns of bottomland trees. Because it climbs high with disc-tipped tendrils, the flowers are often overhead; scan tree trunks and fence lines at eye level, then look up. Off-bloom, its semi-evergreen foliage is a giveaway in winter: glossy paired leaflets that flush purple-bronze in the cold when everything else is bare. The search image is a moist woodland or floodplain edge with a woody vine gripping bark by tendrils.
Flowers finish by late May; the flat, bean-like capsules mature through late summer and dry light brown, persisting into fall. Collect Aug–Oct, once pods turn brown but before they split — they dehisce to scatter stacked, papery winged seeds, so timing beats the wind by days. Dry pods in a paper bag until they crack, shake seed free, and sow fresh — no stratification or scarification is needed (expect ~90% germination in about three weeks). Storage gotcha: the seed is short-lived — viable only about a year even refrigerated — so don't stockpile, and note that vines in dry upland shade often won't fruit at all, so target sunny, moist-site plants for seed. Higher-odds, truer-to-form insurance: crossvine roots easily from semi-hardwood cuttings taken June–July under mist with rooting hormone (rooting in 4–8 weeks), plus root cuttings and layering. Expect rooted cuttings or fall-sown seedlings to be trellis-ready within a season or two.
In Person County, work the bottomland and shoreline woods around Mayo Lake Park and Hyco Lake, and any creek floodplain or moist fencerow near Roxboro. Farther down the Piedmont, Eno River State Park and Occoneechee Mountain (Hillsborough) offer reliable riverine hardwood habitat. Favor sunny edges over deep shade — that's where crossvine actually flowers and sets the pods you're after.