Sweet Potato Vine Flower

While you may be able to coax your plant into producing sweet potato vine seeds they aren t guaranteed to be good so it s best to propagate in other ways.

Sweet potato vine flower.

The ornamental varieties are simply cultivars of the species plant. Ornamental sweet potato vines are in the same family as edible sweet potatoes and are in fact the same species. Typically used as spillers in containers they also make fantastic groundcovers typically spreading 4 to 6 feet. They are bred for the beauty of their leaves rather than edible tubers and the vines from these plants make them look more like a morning glory or clematis than a member of the potato family.

Edible sweet potato vines and some ornamental varieties bloom with flowers that resemble morning glories in shape but some ornamental sweet potato vines do not flower according to missouri. Gardeners turn to the sweet potato vine for its ability to power through just about anything while bringing interesting shapes sizes and colors to a pot or plot. The ornamental sweet potato plant ipomoea butatas is somewhat different from its southern grown vegetable sibling. While it does produce edible sweet potato tubers albeit not very palatable and bitter the ornamental variety bears more colorful foliage making it a popular houseplant.

A vigorous annual or a tender perennial it takes off in summer heat. Ornamental sweet potato vines don t produce many flowers which means they often don t produce seeds.