[Alisdair]

To keep your sights set on the future, Pam, here's another view of the Mallorca plant that John J and Jorun showed. (The most spectacular flowering I've seen on Petrea volubilis was on a big plant covering a high wall in full sun at the Sandy Lane golf course on Barbados.)
In his excellent 1976 book on Flowering Tropical Climbers, Geoffrey Herklots says:
"... deservedly one of the most popular of all tropical climbers.... It does best where there is an alternation of dry and wet seasons. It requires a light well-drained and rich soil in a situation exposed to full sun for most of the day and in a position protected from cold winds.... In the summer rains the twining shoots grow fast, one I measured twined up one metre of iron rod in ten days...."

[pamela]

Well, at last we are having and going to have some spectacular rain and I have spent the last days planting all my 'babies' and collected plants which have been waiting patiently in my greenhouse over summer to get their feet in the ground.   I have planted at least 10 Petrea volubilis which have done so well over the summer since I germinated  the seeds in Feb/ March.  The root systems are amazing, quite a surprise.....so strong that I decided to plant nearly all the seedlings.  This will allow for ones that wont survive!!  Its exciting!  Can't wait for Spring.... Having just been to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands I collected some seeds of a divine blue/purple Salvia, S. sagitatta...(Well I think it is that...will post a picture soon).  Does anyone know or grow it?

[David Feix]

My experience with growing this Petrea here in the San Francisco Bay Area is that it really prefers all day sun with reflected heat.  I've had it bloom multiple times throughout the year when it was planted up against a south facing stucco wall, as it loved the extra heat.  The blooms or should I say calyxes, last much longer in more tropical humid climates, as well as being much larger and densely blooming.  Having also seen this vine growing in deciduous tropical forest along with cactus in southern Mexico, it is amazingly tolerant of a long summer dry season in habitat.

[Alevin]

We also grow Petraea kohautiana, that many  consider a synonym of P. volubilis, but is definitely a different plant - at least the one we grow under that name it is different from the one we call volubilis, both in flowers and leaves, and it is more woodsy and almost self-supporting. Inflorescences are longer, flowers bigger. David have you ever grown it?
I also planted a forma alba - but i cannot tell if it is the volubilis or the kohautiana, as until now it has never bloomed.

[David Feix]

I haven't previously heard of this species, nor seen it. It would appear from information I saw on-line that it is considered the same plant by most. There are other species in Venezuela that are trees rather than vines.

[Alisdair]

Interesting that you find Petrea kohautiana so different, Alessandra. As you say people (including Kew/Mobot) tend to treat it as a synonym of P. volubilis. But writing about the two in his 1976 book Flowering Tropical Climbers, Geoffrey Herklots detailed so many differences that it's a bit surprising to me that people now lump the two together. There's also a cultivated variety (var. anomala) with pure white calyx and corolla.