summer gardens

Rangoon Creeper is a tropical vine planted for its showy, color-changing blooms and tough habit. The flower color is white when they first open and darkens to pink and finally dark red as they mature. The name of the genus Quisqualis is Latin for “What is this?” because early plant explorers would collect the various forms of the plant, shrubby, vine, with or without spines and varying foliage and flower colors. It must have been a frustrated taxonomist who eventually applied the quizzical name.