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Cardiospermum halicacabum
Also called Love In A Puff, Heart Pea, Winter Cherry, Balloonvine, Lesser Balloonvine, Black Winter Cherry, Small Balloon Vine
Balloon vine is a fast-growing perennial climber with delicate three-part leaves and small white flowers followed by inflated, papery seed pods. It grows well in warm, sunny spots where it has something to climb.
Cardiospermum halicacabum, known as the lesser balloon vine, balloon plant, love in a puff, or heartseed, is a climbing plant widely distributed across tropical and subtropical areas of Africa, Australia, South Asia and North America that is often found as a weed along roads and rivers.
The 1989 book records that “The root is diuretic and demulcent. It is mucilaginous, but has a nauseous taste, and is used to treat rheumatism. Sanskrit writers describe the root as emetic, laxative, stomachic, and rubefacient; they prescribe it in rheumatism, nervous diseases, piles, etc. The leaves are used in amenorrhoea. Rheede says that on the Malabar coast the leaves are administered for pulmonic complaints. It is also used in homeopathy to treat eczematic skin. For this purpose, a mother tincture is made from the flowering parts of the plant. This is also processed into creams and ointments. The green parts of the plant are eaten as vegetables.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Cardiospermum halicacabum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
