Yellow Jessamine Flower

Facts of Yellow Jessamine Flower (Plant), "Scientific name for Yellow Jessamine Flower is Gelsemium sempervirens".
Category: Plants Other.
The Yellow Jessamine is sometimes called yellow jasmine, Caroline jasmine, evening trumpetflower, woodbine, gelsemium, poor man’s rope, Carolina wild wood brine, trumpet vine and more. While the terms Jessamine and jasmine are interchangeable, the Yellow Jessamine is not really a jasmine – it just looks like one.

About the Species

The Yellow Jessamine Plant is a vine that displays masses of yellow flowers in the spring, regularly one of the first blooms of the season. Yellow Jessamine Flower funnel shaped flowers have a delicate and fragrant odor. Each Yellow Jessamine Flower has five petals fused about half way down their length. Each Yellow Jessamine Flower dies after being open for a day or two, leaving behind the fruit ovary and a stigma.

The Yellow Jessamine Flower is popular with gardeners because it has few pests but doesn’t overgrow like kudzu, sometimes called the vine that took over the south. Yellow Jessamine Plant is also popular because it is an evergreen; it won’t leave a tangled mess of brown ropy vines in the winter but retain its green leaves. The Yellow Jessamine Plant leaves are small, ovate and alternate on opposite sides of the vine. The stems of the vine climb by twining. The Yellow Jessamine Plants grow up to twenty feet (6.09 meters)tall and eight feet (2.43 meters) wide on a good support structure.

The Yellow Jessamine Flowers mature into small fruit capsules if fertilized. When that opens, you’ll see many small brown seeds released.

Habitat

The Yellow Jessamine Flower is found in the southern United States all the way to Guatemala. It grows in USDA zone 6 and all areas south. Yellow Jessamine Flower grows in many different terrains provided it doesn’t freeze. Yellow Jessamine Plants grows best in open woodlands with sandy, moist soil. It can grow in clays. The Yellow Jessamine Flower grow best in full sun but can grow in partial shade. It has a high heat tolerance.

Uses

The Yellow Jessamine Plants is popular for covering fences or creating shade on a trellis. It is occasionally used as a dense ground covering.
The Yellow Jessamine Plants is poisonous and cannot be eaten. Physical contact with the plants can cause an allergic reaction. The plants resemble honeysuckle flowers, but honeysuckle isn’t nearly as dangerous because its nectar doesn’t cause bad reactions. This is because the Yellow Jessamine plant is full of strychnine-related alkaloids. The alkaloids attract pollinators like bees and butterflies. The plant creates the alkaloids to repel herbivores that might eat it.

History

It is said that Native Americans used extract of the Yellow Jessamine Flower plant to reduce cramping and reduce pain, but it is considered too toxic to use today. The strychnine-related compounds can cause death by paralysis if consumed.
The Yellow Jessamine Flower is the state flower of South Carolina. It received this designation in 1924. Before this, it was made a symbol of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in South Carolina in 1906.

Trivia

A related species, the Rankins Yellow Jasmine, is also known as the Swamp Jessamine. The Swamp Jessamine Plant can be distinguished from the Yellow Jasmine Plant by its lack of fragrance and the fact that it doesn’t grow outside of swamps.
While the name sounds like “jasmine”, the Yellow Jessamine is not a true jasmine. True jasmines belong to the genus “Sasminum”.
When the South Carolina state quarter was created by the U.S. mint, the Yellow Jassamine appeared on the coin along with the Carolina Wren and palmetto tree.