A vine with green balls can be difficult to identify, especially when you find it in the wild. Some examples are the creeping cucumber and the coyote gourd.
Most vines are very beautiful when they flower, so you may be interested in growing them. However, you need to identify them first before you grow them – read this article to learn how to identify different vines with green balls.
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Vines With Green Balls: Identify These Beautiful Plants
1. Creeping Cucumber
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When walking on a hot sunny day, you might see a wild cucumber-like plant with fruits hanging on power cables, poles, and other tall structures.
The fruits are mostly round like balls and they stay green even when ripe. Well, this is most likely the plant that you are seeing. This beautiful cucumber is beautiful to see, as you’d mostly be wondering how it grows so tall and wraps itself around the cables above you.
While the fruit is not edible, the vine itself is not toxic and is a beauty to behold, so you can grow it if you want.
You just need to make sure that the plant has a long stake that it can climb, as its beauty is shown mostly on stakes and not trellises as in the case of our regular cucumber plants.
2. Passion Flower Vine
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This is a vine that you’d really love to see when walking. Other names for this beautiful vine include purple passionflower, maypop vine, wild apricot, true passionflower, and wild passion vine.
There are many varieties of passionflowers and the fruits of each variety come in different colors, but they’re usually green before they change to their ripe colors. The best way to identify these vines is through their beautiful flowers or quadrifoliate leaves.
Even though the passion fruits are safe to eat (for most varieties), the major reason why people grow these plants is for their beautiful flowers. Looking at the flowers, there’s no way you wouldn’t want to have them in your yard. This plant can easily grow, climbing your garden fence as wall vines with minimal effort from you.
3. Amur Peppervine
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If you are walking and you see a vine with glossy cucumber-like leaves and tiny compacted green round fruits, you may be looking at this beauty.
While the fruits grow to become multi-colored when ripe, they all start as green. Looking at the plants, you will most likely see some clusters of green balls and other clusters of multicolored balls.
As you may know already, people grow this beautiful plant because of the appearance of its berries, as they enhance its beauty.
If you’d love to grow these flower vines, ensure that the plant gets at least six hours of sunlight daily. Also, feed the plant with potassium and phosphorus-rich fertilizer, especially when you see flowers.
4. Coyote Gourd
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Here’s a common wild vine that you can easily identify. This vine grows watermelon-like fruits, as it is in the same family as watermelons.
However, the fruits are not edible. You will most likely find this vine in places without human activities such as gardening and agriculture. You will find the fruits laying on the ground until they are eaten by insects and other animals.
While very few people cultivate this vine, you can use it as a ground cover plant if you have bare land. The vine makes a good ground cover, as it spreads its leaves and prevents sunlight from reaching the ground so that weeds cannot grow below its leaves.
5. Carolina Horsenettle
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What if the plant that you see looks so much like the tomato plant? This toxic horsenettle plant resembles tomatoes because they are both nightshade plants.
While their fruits look very similar, the horsenettle fruits retain their green or yellow-green color when ripe. You can also identify the plant through its white or lavender flowers which are very few.
As a nightshade plant, the horsenettle is very toxic and you should not touch or eat any part of the plant. However, this is a good plant to repel mammals such as deer and rabbits, so you can grow it on your garden’s edge. However, ensure that the plant gets enough sunlight.
6. Fingerleaf Gourd
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Here’s another watermelon-like vine that you can see when taking a hike. This plant looks like a bush with green balls and is very easy to identify because of the shape of its leaves. The leaves which inspire this plant’s name look like spread fingers, as they are very thin. They also have white central veins that complement their green colors.
The fingerleaf fruits are not edible, but some people use their fruits and vines to make soap and folk medicine. If you’d like to grow this beautiful vine for ornamental purposes, you’ll need a trellis or cage so that the plant can climb properly. Also, ensure that the soil never gets completely dry before you water again.
7. Bittersweet Nightshade
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Here’s another toxic vine that you only want to appreciate its beauty from a distance. The bittersweet nightshade plant produces fruits that are red when fully ripe, but green for a long time. You can identify the plant through its purple flowers and firm stalks through which the fruits are attached to the plant.
Even though you cannot eat the fruits or any part of the plant, you can use it as a deer repellent. Just grow it close to your garden’s edge and see it repel deer from your garden.
8. Air Potatoes
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How’d you feel if you see potatoes hanging on the branches of a plant instead of growing as tubers in the soil? Even though this plant is neither a potato nor closely related to potatoes, it grows fruits that look so much like potatoes.
The color of its fruits can range from green to brown. The fruits are edible and sweet, so you should try them out.
Air potato plants are not heavy feeders, so you will not spend a lot of money on fertilizer if you grow them.
However, they need a lot of sunlight, so ensure that you plant them in a spot where they can get six to eight hours of sunlight every day. Do not wait until up to half of the soil depth is dry before you water your plants again.
9. Grape Ivy
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If you want a vine that you can grow indoors, here’s a good one for you. The fruits of this ivy can be green though they also come in different colors such as dark blue, blue-green, etc. Grape ivies, just like the poison ivy plant, have inedible fruits, so you only want to grow them for their beauty.
You can grow them in pots or hanging baskets and leave their leaves to fall gracefully. However, you can also support their leaves with a trellis so that they can climb and act as shade in the room. To grow the vine plants outdoors, ensure that they get full sun.
Conclusion
Truly, these plants are beautiful and you should grow the ones that you can.
Here are some reminders from the article:
- Some watermelon-like vines that you’d see in the wild are coyote gourd and fingerleaf gourd.
- Some of the most beautiful vines that you should consider growing are passionflowers and bittersweet nightshades.
- Please be sure that a vine or fruit is safe for eating before you eat it, as most wild vines are toxic.
- Always put the growing condition of any plant that you want to grow into consideration so that you can easily grow the plant.
- While you can grow vines anyhow you want, their beauty usually comes up when you support them with a stake or trellis.
Remember to take note of the flowers and leaves, as they can help you to easily identify the vines that you see. If you want to add more red to your garden, check out our Vines with red berries detailed guide.
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