The term is from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu. The plant covers a house in England and is an exotic import. It is not a Monkey Cup as that is not a vine.
Later the book mentions the plant is covered in little red flowers.
Monkey’s Ladder vines (Bauhinia species) are common in Latin America. I’m not sure how common they are in cultivation.
The caption calls this a Monkey Ladder, but it is actually a Sea Heart Vine Entada gigas.
There is also a Monkey Comb Vine Pithecoctinium crucigerum. (There are also several trees in the genus Apeiba that are called Monkey Combs.)
However, I would imagine that the term in the story was simply made up to indicate a vine monkeys might climb on, Fu Manchu stories not being noted for their scientific precision.
Not sure, there’s a lot of vines with ‘monkey’ in at least one common name; ‘Monkey Rope’- Parsonsia straminea, ‘Monkey Ladder Vine’- Entada gigas, ‘Monkey Vine’ -Bauhinia glabra… I can’t, however, think of or find any which are both scented, and would survive long outiside in the UK.
It is also a night bloomer.
I’m not sure that the plant has the word monkey in it’s name. The term monkey-creeper seems to indicate a common term back then for a general group of vines and the flowers identify a specific plant in that group. I’m looking for what plants were in that group or better yet this specific one described. It may not be hardy if it’s a fast growing vine.
The above plants are not red flowered.
I’m just seeing if I can fill in the blanks. I realize the source is fiction. Looking up terms from old stories often leads to something you never knew about.
I’m going to propose Campsis radicans, because (stay with me):
It’s a climber, more or less hardy in Britain, especially against a wall.
It was probably imported prior to the timeframe specified - Joseph Hooker (1814-79) drew pictures of it
It’s slightly fragrant
The flowers superficially resemble those of Mimulus spp, which is called ‘monkey flower’, because the flowers supposedly resemble the face of a monkey.
I get your reasoning linking it to the monkey flower and have to say you’ve come up with the best possibility yet. I can’t link the trumpet flowers to the word monkey so far. I notice most botany sources don’t mention bloom time by time of day or night. This is a gap they should fill.
I just found this in a Google Books search:
However, this is describing a shrub, not a climber, and it doesn’t have red flowers.
Ah, we could be getting closer. The above linked plant (Melodinus suavolens) is called monkey-creeper. Other species in this genus have red flowers, are vines, and are fragrant - for example: Melodinus baccellianus:
I reckon that’s the plant, if the author did indeed have a real species in mind.
I appreciate the help people and it looks like I have a few possibilities, but nothing definitive. This is often the best you can do on something like this.
Campsis is a nice suggestion, but its flowers are relatively large and you wouldn’t notice a marked fragrance around it.