Click here to report Beach Vitex

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Identify Beach Vitex

Report Beach Vitex

Beach Vitex

A Coastal Menace

Beach Vitex, Vitex rotundifolia, is a deciduous woody vine native the western Pacific. This plant was introduced to the Southeastern United States in the mid-1980’s for use as an ornamental and also for beach stabilization. By the mid-1990’s, plant specialists began to notice beach vitex spreading from original plantings on North Carolina and South Carolina beaches, crowding out native dune plants and altering sea turtle nesting areas.

Sea Turtle Nesting
Beach vitex on the beaches is altering sea turtle nesting areas and is also costing the lives of newly emerged sea turtle hatchlings. Hatchlings become trapped in the thick tangle of vegetation, exhausting themselves and perishing before reaching the ocean.
Impacts on Native Vegetation
In areas where beach vitex has been found, native plants are being choked out. Sea oats, beach panic grasses and the Federally threatened seabeach amaranth cannot out-compete the fast growing beach vitex.
Dune Erosion
Beach vitex lacks the fibrous root system like the native plants of our beaches and thus, lacks the ability to trap sand adequately. As beach vitex dies back each winter, the root systems can be found exposed where the beach has literally eroded from underneath the plant, further jeopardizing our beaches.
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Identify Beach Vitex

Beach vitex is woody, vine-like plant with almost round leaves in pairs along the stem. It has small, lavender-colored flowers and blooms May – June. The leaves feel smooth like leather or velvet and smell fragrant when crushed.

Beach vitex blooms in May. Purple flowers are on stalks at the end of the new shoot and mature from the bottom up toward the tip.
Beach vitex can form runners along the sand surface.
The flowers form a green, hard, spherical fruit between ⅛ inch and ¼ inch in diameter which gradually dries and turns black through summer. The fruit has one to four seed in each fruit.
The leaves turn reddish to tan with white undersides in November and fall off in December.
During the winter, beach vitex is a tangled mass of woody vine-like stems with clusters of hard, dry black fruits still attached.
Beach vitex grows readily from seeds, which maybe distributed into new areas by storms.

There are several plants that are native to our beach dunes that may at first look be confused with beach vitex.

Fiddle leaf morning glory forms runners on the beach front, but the leaves are lobed at the base.
Seabeach amaranth (Amaranthus pumilus) is a federally threatened plant that is commonly found in wash-out areas between front dunes. The leaves look like spinach leaves, the stalks of the leaves are red, and its growth habit is of a small herb with a cluster of leaves.
Sea rocket is an herbaceous annual that grows in a small clump on the front beach. Sea rocket leaves are thick and not in pairs on an herbaceous stem. The plant forms a green, segmented, linear fruit in March and the terminal section will dry out and fall off during the summer.
Silver-leaf croton has oval-shaped leaves like beach vitex and may be thought to be a beach vitex seedling. But the leaves of silver-leaf croton are not in pairs, the leaves are on a longer stalk, the leaves and stems are covered with short fuzz.
Seashore elder is a woody frontbeach plant that has thick, linear leaves and vertical stems. Although it grows in clumps, it does not produce horizontal rhizomes that grow at the surface of the dunes like beach vitex.
Beach Pea has leaves that are divided into three lobes and stems that are slightly fuzzy.
Click here to download a Dune Plant Quick-ID Guide (pdf)

Report Beach Vitex

EDDMapS (Early Detection & Distribution Mapping System) is an easy-to-use mapping tool to document and monitor invasive species occurrence and distribution.

Summer 2024 Reported Locations

Survey Progress 2024

Areas outlined in blue have been surveyed from the beach. Yellow highlights areas where Beach Vitex may potentially occur that have not been surveyed due to access or time constraints. If you live in one of these areas, please help with the search and report your sightings! Please also report negative survey results where you look but don’t find Beach Vitex.