One of the highlights of the Asian Garden at UBC is the climbing woody vines. Although I'm still struggling to get a worthwhile photograph of one from a distance (not an easy feat in the woodlands of the Asian Garden), I can at least share this close-up of a soon-to-bloom Japanese hydrangea vine, a woody climber native to both Japan and Korea.
To learn a little more about Schizophragma hydrangeoides, see the garden's interpretative sign. For a gardening perspective (and an image of the plant “climbing” a wall), visit the Kemper Center for Home Gardening via Missouri Botanical Garden.
Gardening questions about this and other climbers & vines can be posted to the UBC Vines & Climbers discussion forum.
Photography resource link: Expose to the Right, an article from Michael Reichmann of The Luminous Landscape. I've been attempting this practice more often than not lately, but I'm finding it a fairly risky technique as it is very easy to overexpose a particular channel – it's easier on very expensive cameras that display the histogram for every channel.
I like this picture. The petals remind me of a modern-art mobile I might see hanging in the atrium of an office building or museum.
What a wonderful plant for my HY collection - as I am a little 'schizo' myself. I hope I can find a good supplier for this one!
Schizophragma hydrangeoides - Z5 - RHS Index of Garden Plants, Griffiths
Schizophragma hydrangeoides - Z5-9 - A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, Brickell, Cole, Zuk
I have this growing luxuriantly on a trellis around my patio. It's 10 years old and finally flowered last year and this year- one flower only! But worth waiting for.
Unless I'm sorely mistaken, those mobile-like bits aren't petals but bracts (though I can't tell exactly what the bracts are subtending - seem to me there should be more of them). The unopened flowers are those little yellowish clumps in the middle of the photo.
Here is this species at the Birmingham, Alabama Botanical Garden in early May.