Passiflora incarnata-Maypop Passion Flower

Interesting! Well I guess it is that despirate lol! :slight_smile: Self is the only option within i can 99% guarantee 6 miles away at my creekbottom pasture where my maypop seedlings and main orchard are. My home is in a desolate area of dry upland plowed wheat so i would be shocked to find any around here, certainly not within 2 miles my nearest neighbor is a mile away and they dont have any lol :slight_smile:

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My LA maypop update… We had an early first frost a week ago so the day before I went and dug up turmeric, potted up my remaining fig airlayers etc and I picked my 4 unripe maypop fruit from my unpollinated plant that is turning into a thicket…
Plus I marked the newest maypop suckers which at least 4 suckers are an impressive 15 feet away from the original 2017 small plant!!! So this stuff spreads fast and has been through 2 KS winters with -5 and +3F…
So the fruit is slowly ripening… Oh if it had been pollinated I can only dream of a bushel of fruit!! But next year…
You want to let it turn yellowish and get fairly to very wrinkled skin before eating so it gets sweet and juicy! Wrinkled is a must…
Anyway, I ate my first one today, the smallest one which was immature and very green when picked, but today was wrinkled and yellowish and it tasted awesome!! I saved every seed because I don’t know when i may can get some more from Dads LA patch…
Anyway, it tasted just like they do in LA when ripe wrinkled, super sweet passionfruit juicy just like the Purple Australian Passionfruit sold in the grocery, they are so delicious!!!
I dont understand why they arent the #1 fruit in the usa!!! Even people in LA with them in their back yard dont know what they are!! I can hardly believe that I even when I was a boy thought they were poisonous and I remember mowing the vigorous vines down and seeing the mower spit out that weird fruit and it puzzled me… They are better than pear, plum, pineapple, mango, apple, or even asian persimmon I am going to spread seeds across the midwest and johnny appleseed them into creek bottoms across kansas in a few years after I expand my patch and improve pollination and get big fruit crops!!!
As you can see in picture, the smaller one is wrinkled and yellowing and inside is juice and pulp covering seeds and you can see seeds I already ate the pulp from, and the big one is not ripe yet and must get well wrinkled…

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I found them kind of a pain to eat with the fairly small fruit to seed ratio. They can taste quite good though.

The spreading habit seems odd. I’ve got shoots coming up quite far from the plant, but not thickly. I’m still not sure if it is animal spread seeds or runners.

The bees absolutely love it, though. It gets more bees than the rest of my fruit combined.

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Our Passion (passiflora Incarnata ) IS used for (leaf) tea To make you sleep
said to be grown more popular In Europe than in The US, which they cultivate it.

If your on Certain Anti Depressants medications may want to make sure with a doctor
(it is a MAOI inhibitor )

As for eating found My first One last year In Tennessee behind the Motel/ or Hotel
they had a certain similar to something Familiar
(orange , tangerine , or mango, Can’t remember most likely Citrus -ie )

really sour , but really good putting sugar inside, and eating , would make a great Smoothie
or topping for a cake or something of that nature

Not sure how reliable this source is , but I heard of people spraying a sugar mix on flowers
to attract bee’s looks like Maypops do not need it –
I guess if it’s in some dead zone (corn fields spraying ) maybe ants would pollinate )

As far as breeding I hear, (and believe ), if you restrict the roots in pots they Flower the same year.
could do some serious selective breeding
(Note someone posted persimmons on this forum in a nursery (one green world I think)
In pots Flowering the first or second year)

Sheffields Nursery That sells seeds Claims the seed source is Minnosota MN
(on the seed picture link)

I know I have seen them -20 F outside Chicago on a chain link fence in the open (not protected.)

Better to get a Lawn Mower, with a bag attached , and dry those leaves to sell (hahaha)

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Love the blooms on Maypop but they can become a prolific weed that is hard to kill in my area.

Like in my trellised blackberries where they get worse every year and I can’t kill them!

I don’t like the taste of the ripe ones I have tried but I love the Pop they make when you step on them.

Wish my Maypops tasted more like tropical passion fruit.

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Interesting. Mine are sour too unless you let them get wrinkled, then sweet tropical flavor.

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That’s not my experience here in 7b. Once they get to that point for me they get a very strange flavor and the pulp starts to get darker. Mine are best when they can be picked from the vine very easily but before they start getting wrinkled and yellow. It’s difficult to tell from the picture, but it looks like the seed/pulp in your wrinkled yellow looks like my seed/pulp when they taste best, yet the exterior looks very different.
Mine are also extremely variable in flavor. I had my best one ever this year, it was truly delicious. However, most of mine weren’t very good.

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Interesting! It must be that every strain has significant differences. I’d love to get some of those dark Australian strains and see if their roots and regrow vigor are similarly 6b hardy…

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If effort was put into tracking and breeding the maypop i bet there is great potential here to compete with australia.

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Older thread, but I grow maypops exclusively for the fruit.
I made a quick video!
https://youtu.be/JnLXzSHZIiU

The fruits really need to drop before they are fit to eat. You could get lucky if you pick one on the day it was going to drop :laughing:

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Your orchard looks great! Congratulations! I have 3 maypop plants but they are small… maby next year! :+1:

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How are the maypops this year
saw, and spoke of yours Asimina tracker
Very big one you got like a tennis ball,

I really do not watch videos would rather read to save time ,
but wanted to get a sense of your set up looks great .

I wonder if you could grow the vines straight up like hops do , maybe 50 feet straight up
(or if the sugars wouldn’t reach I know they grow grapes in Georgia (the country) straight up. in the trees’ )

I always wanted to market in a way to have a vine grow up dead trees
except I do not own a landscaping company , (or nursery)
but think a old dead tree with vines covering it would look nice
even if it was a Sterile maypop (like the nursery trade often sells of maypops )
seems like a waste having to cut down a solid tree with a big crown
(if salt build up killed it or something)
Off the topic of maypop,
but I think the early red leaves in fall of Virginia Creeper would look nice
they even have a variegated type or mix, and match
wild (male/(and or )female )grapes
hops maypop native honeysuckle vine all on a dead tree for fall color/flowers)

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it was you Asimina tracker that I saw had the roots restricted in those long citrus pots
Have you done that in a way to selective breed very fast every year??

I know you mentioned you culled out the sour ones ,
but may be good to try in a food dehydrator or small toaster oven (or large) set at 200F
could save for tea or cooking as baking cookies with chocolate,
and if your not a baker
milk chocolate goes good with very sour Rhubarb tastes like raisin nets )
pretty easy just to melt chocolate with rhubarb or test some maypop pulp melted in it,.

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We have a pretty good wild strain here in my corner of Rockcastle County, Kentucky—prolific, large-fruited and (when fully ripe) wonderfully fragrant and with a sweet to sweet-tart tropical flavor. Often, though, they’re not able ripen much of their crop before frost—depends on the season. They run rampant in fields and old fence rows.

I am currently stratifying some seeds from some of the best wild specimens I could find here, and will attempt germinating them later in the winter. It’s definitely one of my favorite wild natives—and I look forward to seeing what it will do in cultivation.

BTW, this neat little Grit article about maypops notes that Dr. Brian Stafne at Mississippi State is doing some breeding work with P. incarnata.

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Wow, size is sometimes hard to ascertain from a picture but those fruits look yuge!
Will have to check out that article. You would think more breeding would be done with a focus on fruit quality.

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Oh! The author of that article is the Pawpaw author.

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I really wish I had taken some pictures with something for size comparison—and will have to snap some better ones next year. They vary, but ones approaching tennis ball size are not uncommon. I agree that P. incarnata is definitely ripe for breeding!

It is interesting that both the pawpaw and the wild passion fruit are northern outliers of mostly tropical fruit families. The pawpaw is getting a lot of (deserved) attention these days. Perhaps the underappreciated maypop’s day will come, too!

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It took me a while to figure out what to do with the fruit, but blending the pulp really does work for separating the seeds from the juice.

There is a fair amount of breeding for passionfruit, but it’s all for tropical types.

Mine still loves its little corner of the yard, and this year I hope to set up a mulch barrier, mulch to keep the grass down, and put in some stakes to climb. It remains bulletproof in my area even with limited watering and the runners aren’t that hard to control.

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@TheGrog So you just chuck the innards in the blender, then use a mesh bag or something to strain out the solids?
I get hundreds of fruits each year from my planting, but I mostly just eat them fresh. Sometimes I’ll make jelly (which is great).
I’ve not done much with juicing. Early on I felt like the juice alone didn’t taste that good. But with so many fruits I may start doing that. Plus eating the seeds I feel like upsets my stomach if I’m eating a few a day.
Like anything, you do tend to get tired of eating them after a month or so

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Eeek!
That article joins a list of publications that incorrectly state that maypop fruits turn yellow or orange when ripe:

It’s just not true. P. Caerulea fruits do, I believe, but not incarnata. I was complaining about this on another thread the other day LOL

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