Morning sun or bright shade. An herbaceous, perennial groundcover with wide, white-veined leaves and unique brownish flowers resembling, as the common name suggests, an old-fashioned meerschaum pipe.
Pipevine attracts butterflies, especially pipevine swallowtails, whose caterpillars will eat it to the ground several times per summer. Thus, as a perennial, pipevine seems to appear and disappear constantly — but it adds the telltale color of black and blue butterflies to the garden all summer long.
Water to establish. Be careful not to inadvertently weed it, as it often grows under other plants and at times the leaves look ragged when caterpillars have finished. Pipevine is easily mistaken for Carolina snailseed, but has stripes on the leaves.
