Photo: Ethan Schovanek, via iNaturalist, public domain / CC0. Unmodified apart from resizing.
Colour
orange, red
Region
Japan and temperate East Asia
Season
summer
Shape
trumpet
Identification
A deciduous vine over 10 m long, climbing walls and trunks by aerial roots. Opposite odd-pinnate leaves with dark green serrated leaflets. In summer large orange-red trumpet flowers up to 7 cm across with spreading lobes veined red inside, in drooping panicles at the branch tips, a wall covered in them like sunset cloud; the ziwei and tiaohua of ancient texts. Slightly less hardy than the American trumpet vine but far larger-flowered.
Habitat
Walls, old trees, rockeries and garden trellises, in sun, warmth and moisture, slightly shade-tolerant, tolerant of wet and mildly saline ground, needing good drainage.
Distribution
Native to East Asia, widely grown and wild south of the Yangtze and in northern China, grown in Japan (nōzenkazura, introduced in the Heian period); absent from Singapore. The genus has only two species, the Chinese and the American.
Season and behaviour
June to August, peaking in high summer; July in the north. Whole flowers drop, leaving a layer of orange-red on the ground.
Photography tips
These are the FilmAnalysis editors' notes, not content from the sources.
A wall of orange-red is cleanest against grey-white wall or blue sky, saturated in front light and veined against it, half a stop under. The depth of the trumpet from the front with a medium lens, the red veins inside with a macro. Old walls, grey tiles and trumpet vine make the traditional summer picture; whole fallen flowers from above.
Photographic styles
A cascade of orange-red on a grey wall; veined trumpet macro.
Similar species
American trumpet vine (slender tube, smaller redder flowers, more leaflets); the hybrid trumpet vine (a cross of the two, cultivated); flame vine (small orange tubes in strings, spring, southern China).
Related badge
None yet. No validated photo recognition exists for this species, so no badge is tied to it: a name in the encyclopedia is not evidence in a photograph.
The illustration is original FilmAnalysis artwork. The photograph is from iNaturalist; its licence and author are under it.
Why it is listed: this species comes from the Flower checklist (GBIF backbone and Wikidata verified). Names follow the GBIF backbone and Wikidata; the facts follow the sources below; photo recognition is not offered.
