The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Rhoicissus tomentosa
Also called Monkeyrope, Simple Leaved Grape, Wild Vine
Rhoicissus tomentosa is a fast-growing, evergreen climbing vine from southern African forests, grown as an ornamental creeper for its velvety, multi-coloured leaves. It is easy to grow in shade, sun, or indoors, given a trellis or support for its tendrils.
Rhoicissus tomentosa (or the Cape grape) is a vigorous, evergreen vine that is indigenous to the afro-montane forests of southern Africa. It is increasingly popular as an ornamental creeper in gardens, and it has a wide range of uses in traditional medicine.
A very attractive and easy-to-grow creeper for gardening. Its even, multi-coloured, evergreen foliage makes a good local alternative to ivy for African gardens. It can also be grown in the shade (and even indoors) as well as in the open sun. It can be used as a groundcover in shady areas; it can be planted to grow up walls like ivy (although it requires a trellis of some sort for its tendrils to hold onto); it readily climbs up and over a fence to form a screen or hedge; and it can even be used to make wire-basket topiaries.
It can easily be grown from seed, although cuttings can also be rooted.
The Cape grape can be found throughout the wetter regions of southern Africa, from the forests on the eastern slopes of Table Mountain, eastwards throughout the coastal afro-temperate forests of South Africa (Cape Provinces, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Provinces) and then on to Zimbabwe and Malawi.
Veld Grape · Bastard Forest Grape · Common Forest Grape · Bastard Forest Grapes
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Rhoicissus tomentosa 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.
