Campsis radicans is native to the central and eastern United States, a vine of swamps, thickets, and forest edges that has also colonized roadside telephone poles and fence lines with cheerful indifference to what its hosts might prefer. Its common names — hellvine, devil's shoestring, cow-itch — give a fair account of its character: it suckers from underground runners, self-seeds with abandon, and can build impenetrable colonies that crowd out everything around them. This is not a plant for the faint-hearted or the small garden.

In the right situation, though, it is genuinely spectacular. The orange-gold trumpet flowers appear on new growth through summer and into fall, held aloft on stems that can reach forty feet in good conditions, and hummingbirds treat them as a reliable seasonal resource. It grows in lean-to-average soils far better than in rich ones, where its already formidable vigor becomes unmanageable; planting it near a mowed edge or a concrete barrier helps contain the suckers. It is the larval host plant for the plebeian sphinx moth, adding ecological value beyond the obvious pollinator appeal. Early spring pruning shapes the plant without sacrificing flowers, since it blooms entirely on new growth.