Passiflora incarnata-Maypop Passion Flower

F1 hybrids with tropical species are not fully hardy. However, F1 hybrids with some hardy species can be very hardy. Hybrids of P. incarnata with P. tucumanensis are usually hardier than either parent. My fully hardy hybrids are many generations beyond the F1 and do have root hardiness equal to pure P. incarnata. I’m not doing much with them now, but I have shared many with other breeders over the years.

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Wow :open_mouth:
it’s great what you bred

That is shame. I guess there are people who want to have it.

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I would beg for seeds but the snails eat my Passiflora

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That’s funny that you mention it. I planted 2 Maypops last year and thought they are going to crawl on the pebbles. They started to grow really well but then suddenly the snails found them and they just love passifloras. I was so desparate that I will lose them that I put snail poison all around them.
I basically gave up on them and just left them to their fate.
The vines just wanted to live so much that one of them reached about 3m before the winter. I hope they will both resprout next year.

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I planted a lot of maypop. Short after planting it was ok, but the next year they sprouted very late in june and the snails have all eaten them up.
I was thinking of snail poison, I don’t mind that it is “chemicals”. but i have a problem with killing the snails.

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what is about the other cold hardy spicies, p. caerulea, lutea… do they taste better without an unpleasant aftertaste?

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P. caerulea is not unpleasant but fruit is insipid. P. lutea grows wild in my yard. I tasted the fruit just to see how bad it was. Not really that bad, but very small and not something anyone would want to eat. Some of the hardier species with good tasting fruit are P. tucumanensis, P. elegans, P. sidifolia, and P. actinia. The last three on this list are short day bloomers, so they want to bloom in winter. That makes it hard to cross them with P. incarnata.

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Thank you. I didn’t know there were more „cold hardy“ passiflora with even better fruits.
Even if they need winter protection

how do you deal with it for crossings. do you put it in a dark closet/room with artificial light with fewer light hours? Or can the pollen be stored in the fridge for longer?

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I recently started experimenting with propagating some of my more promising maypops through root cuttings: placing about a 4" piece of roughly pencil thickness root horizontally in a pot of well-draining medium and covering it with about an inch of the same, then putting on bottom heat. I tried simple air layering last year (no hormone), but no dice. Anyone else have luck with cloning maypops? Considering how readily they sucker, I’d think roots would be the surest method.

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I’ve planted chunks of roots in the ground and they have come up every time.
Haven’t tried in pots though.
Good luck!

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My root cuttings from @JeremiahT are sprouting, all three selections. I planted them in a raised bed in my greenhouse to let them grow into the rafters, with just the top of each cutting sticking out of the soil:



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:+1: By the end of summer, you may well have a jungle in there! I really hope they’ll fruit for you!

Root cuttings seem a pretty reliable cloning method for maypops. I’ve tried several this year and all have produced new plants.

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My root cuttings are looking nice. Seeds didn’t get sown until a few weeks ago and are slow to sprout, it seems. I stratified them but didn’t scarify or anything of the sort.

Mine are going into a high tunnel. I’m hopeful I can keep their rambunctious tendencies to a dull roar. Planning to grow them in containers to contain the roots somewhat. Similar schemes afoot for figs, another notorious bully of the rhizosphere

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I should add that the seedlings I planted out last year are also budding out outdoors but the buds seem to be getting munched down by slugs or earwigs or both before they expand much. Hopefully they will get going more vigorously soon and overcome that pest pressure.

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Mine get devoured every year by small (short grain rice sized) bright orange beetles. Have never figured out what they are. But the vigor of the vines eventually wins out.

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I wish I had some kind of pest pressure. It is popping up 10ft away in all directions from where I originally planted it. I think I made a mistake by not putting it in a container. :face_with_peeking_eye:

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Probably the passionflower flea beetle?

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YASSSS!
Flea is a very apt name - they poing into thin air if disturbed.
They don’t cause enough issues for me to try to eradicate them.

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That’s it’s MO apparently. The pot idea is a bit wishful thinking on my part. I hoping to sink a couple of pots into the ground and use a layer of crushed stone and maybe some geotextile above it) at the bottom of the pots to discourage rooting through the drainage holes.

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Has anyone got to try their ripe maypop fruit yet? I had one from a plant I sourced from California last year but the fruit didn’t ripen in time. It is very good tasting, as acidic as a passionfruit and a muted tropical aromatic and flavor. My other maypop I sourced from a seller in Florida I have yet to try this year, but last year it tasted only slightly acidic and way more tropical but it had a very mild sour aftertaste.

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