General Plant Information (Edit)
Plant Habit: Shrub
Sun Requirements: Full Sun to Partial Shade
Partial or Dappled Shade
Partial Shade to Full Shade
Water Preferences: Mesic
Soil pH Preferences: Neutral (6.6 – 7.3)
Minimum cold hardiness: Zone 4b -31.7 °C (-25 °F) to -28.9 °C (-20 °F)
Plant Height: 3 to 4 feet, then vines higher up
Leaves: Evergreen
Broadleaf
Fruit: Showy
Fruiting Time: Fall
Late fall or early winter
Flowers: Inconspicuous
Flower Time: Late spring or early summer
Resistances: Pollution
Propagation: Other methods: Cuttings: Stem
Pollinators: Bees
Miscellaneous: Tolerates poor soil
Monoecious
Child plants: 7 child plants

Image
Common names
  • Wintercreeper
  • Bigleaf Wintercreeper
Also sold as:
  • Vegeta

Photo Gallery
Location: Aurora, Illinois
Date: fall in the 1980's
foliage and fruit of the vine part up wall
Location: Aurora, Illinois
Date: fall in the 1980's
low bushy base and viney top climbing
Location: Aurora, Illinois
Date: summer in the 1980's
more groundcover style
Location: Glen Ellyn, Illinois
Date: 2007-11-19
vine part climbing tree
Comments:
  • Posted by ILPARW (southeast Pennsylvania - Zone 6b) on Dec 9, 2018 8:00 PM concerning plant:
    This broadleaf evergreen from East Asia usually grows with a bushy base of 1 to 4 feet high and then sends up stems to become a climbing vine above. I grew up at my parent's brick house that had one Bigleaf Wintercreeper planted in a narrow space about 2 feet wide between the brick house wall and a cement walkway that went around the house. There was a second plant also in the narrow strip of soil between the brick wall and the cement sidewalk behind the house. Both plants were a bushy base about 3 to 4 feet high and then becoming a vine above that. They blended well with the Japanese Pachysandra growing in the rest of the soil strips between the house and the cement walkway that went around about half of the house. I used to have some fun by pulling off some of the succulent leaves and throwing them on my dad's grill and watch the leaves sizzle and pop. This cultivar is somewhat common in the Chicago, Illinois region, sold by many conventional nurseries there and I've seen some in central Illinois. I have not really seen it elsewhere; none in southeast Pennsylvania. It is a heavy fruiting form and it does have larger, leathery leaves to about 2 inches long. I once had to save the front plant from the white hard- shelled Euonymus Scale insect that can kill off this cultivar and others of the Fortune Wintercreeper Euonymus. I did this by cutting below the infestation and the plant grew back; otherwise, one must use dormant oil sprays. As I have come into greater passion for American native plants than Eurasian ones, I don't like this plant as much as I used to. In conventional landscaping it is occasionally good as a broadleaf evergreen. I do like 'Vegetus' better than any of the other Wintercreepers. I don't know of this Bigleaf cultivar escaping cultivation in northern or central Illinois to become an invasive plant.

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