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.
Campsis radicans · Bignoniaceae
Piedmont's blazing native hummingbird vine — trivially easy to grow, genuinely hard to contain.
Community photos of Campsis radicans — fix this search image in your eye before the hike (leaf, flower/bract, ripe fruit, bark, whole-plant habit).
Native and common across all NC Piedmont counties (and statewide, Coastal Plain to lower Mountains); no county gaps around Person Co.
Best bet: Vegetative is the surest route — root suckers and dormant hardwood/root cuttings strike easily: lift a rooted sucker in late winter, or take 4–6 in. hardwood cuttings (Nov–Feb) or softwood cuttings (Jun–Jul, roots in ~1–3 wk). For seed: air-dry capsules, shake out winged seed, cold-moist stratify ~30–60 days at ~40°F (a short prechill breaks the shallow dormancy — not strictly required), then sow warm (70–85°F) in spring; germination is high (~70%).
Horticulturally it could not be easier — a Piedmont native that shrugs off heavy clay, heat, humidity, and drought (zone 7b/8a well within its range). The honest caution is aggression: it suckers into dense colonies from spreading roots and self-seeds freely, aerial rootlets can damage siding/mortar, and sap causes mild contact dermatitis ('cow-itch'). Grow only on a stout freestanding structure well away from buildings, septic lines, and neighbors, or contain the roots with a barrier / large pot. A management liability, not a fragile plant.
Trumpet vine advertises itself. From late June through August, look for fist-sized clusters of orange-to-scarlet trumpets flaring at the ends of a coarse, sprawling vine scrambling over fencerows, roadside brush, old-field margins, and powerline cuts. It wants full sun and disturbed edges, and it loves the heavy Piedmont clay that stumps fussier plants. Where you see hummingbirds working a sunny thicket in July, trumpet vine is usually the reason. Off-bloom, find it by the odd-pinnate, opposite leaves draped over a fence and the vine gripping wood with masses of short aerial rootlets.
For a nursery, skip the seed and take the vine itself — it's the highest-odds, fastest route. Lift a rooted sucker in late winter, or take 4–6 in. dormant hardwood/root cuttings (Nov–Feb) or softwood cuttings (Jun–Jul), which root in as little as 1–3 weeks. If you want seed for volume, collect leathery-brown capsules in Sep–Oct just before they split (roughly 2–3 months after bloom), air-dry, shake out the winged seed, then cold-moist stratify ~30–60 days at 40°F — a short prechill is enough to break the shallow dormancy, and germination is easy either way — and sow warm (70–85°F) in spring for ~70% germination. Seedlings and cuttings both size up fast. Phenology gotcha: capsules picked green in summer are immature — wait for the brown, papery stage.
Around Roxboro / Person County, check sunny edges at Mayo Lake Park and the fencerows and old fields fringing Hyco Lake, plus any roadside thicket or powerline right-of-way. Farther afield in the Piedmont it's ubiquitous along Falls Lake, the Eno River / Occoneechee Mountain edges, and Mayo River State Park margins. You will not have to hunt hard — the harder job is picking a plant far enough from someone's fence to harvest guilt-free.