Northeast Wetland Flora
Field Office Guide to Plant Species
Ampelamus albidus (Nutt.) Britton
- Family: Milkweed (Asclepiadaceae)
- Flowering: July-September
- Field Marks: This vine differs by its opposite, heart-shaped leaves, its 5 white petals 1/4-1/3 inch long, and its smooth follicles 4-6 inches long.
- Habitat: Fields, moist woods.
- Habit: Climbing or twining herb from a thickened, woody rootstock.
- Stems: Twining or climbing, up to 30 feet long, smooth or sparsely hairy.
- Leaves: Opposite, simple, ovate, pointed at the tip, heart-shaped at the base, without teeth, smooth or sparsely hairy, up to 4 1/2 inches long, sometimes nearly as wide, on smooth or sparsely hairy stalks up to 4 inches long.
- Flowers: Few to several in short racemes or umbels, the racemes or umbels on smooth or sparsely hairy stalks up to 2 inches long.
- Sepals: 5, green, free from each other or barely united at the base.
- Petals: 5, white, united at the base, 1/4-1/3 inch long, with a 5-parted crown between the petals and the stamens, the crown lanceolate, cleft to about the middle.
- Stamens: 5.
- Pistils: Ovary superior, smooth.
- Fruits: Follicles lanceoloid to narrowly obovoid, green, smooth, 1/2-3/4 inch long; seeds numerous, with hairy, tail-like projections.
- Notes: Some authors in the past have incorrectly referred to this species as Cynanchum laeve (Michx.) Pers.
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