China Blue Sausage Vine, or Holboellia coriacea, is an attractive evergreen twining vine with glossy, trifoliate leaves. Fragrant white and purple flowers emerge in summer, followed by edible but unpalatable purple fruit, for which the vine is named. Once established, this vine can be a vigorous grower and is a highly ornamental addition to trellises and arbors—a useful evergreen cover for downspouts.

UPDATE 2023: Our sausage vine may finely be established; it has come out strong this year. I should note that a couple of tendrils that ventured outside the protective wire mesh at the base of the plant were snipped off by either a squirrel or a rabbit!

UPDATE 2022: Well, this guy has been reeeal slow to start. Sadly in its first summer, the main vine was severed by some person or critter (likely a squirrel), so it had to recover from that. Perhaps that set it back, but it’s still pretty spindly t even this spring after a year of recovery. I’ve halfway given up on this vine and planted an evergreen clematis on the east side of the sunroom and a vigorous deciduous clematis to the west. It will be a race to see which one wins out!

POSTED 2020: Looking forward to seeing how this vine does. I’d never heard of holboellia before researching to find a suitable specimen underneath the sunroom. It seems to be the right size, is evergreen, and has the lower deck stairs to shade its roots. And it fruits! Hopefully, they won’t be a mess.