I’m in the Willamette Valley in Oregon zone 8b and about 6 years ago grew a Passiflora edulis, took cuttings in the fall and planted the resulting plants in the spring on black plastic mulch. The plants grew vigorously flowered profusely, but only set 2 fruit all season. It was supposedly a self fertile variety, lots of insects visited and I hand pollinated as well. I don’t know if it’s our weather conditions that prevented pollination or if it wasn’t actually self fertile. I have always wanted to try again with multiple varieties, but still haven’t gotten around to it. Anyone else experiment with growing P. edulis as an “annual”? I also have never grown maypops, so perhaps they have the flavor I’m seeking or are edulis better?
Incarnata taste great if truly ripe, in my opinion, and I grow a lot of them.
However, the flavor is not quite the same as edulis or x flavicarpa. These tropical species are much more complex and intense in flavor. . However, they typically are less sweet than incarnata.
I don’t think any passiflora are self fertile. Could be wrong, but incarnata are not. Any other passiflora should be able to pollinate your edulis.
You may not have luck nonetheless due to potentially insufficient growing days for the fruit to mature.
Edulis is way better if you can grow it. I’ve got a few seedlings I germinated from a grocery store Edulis last summer. My plan is to keep them in pots and bring them back indoors before it gets too cold here in Z6. We get several months above 80 degrees here so I hope this works.
They can grow very large in one season. Each of my plants completely filled a 7’x5’ space on a trellis. If you kept it in a 5 gallon or bigger pot all season you may be able to bring it in at the end of the season though. If there’s no fruit left on it, you could always prune it all the way back too.
I’m trying this route, and have 1 year old seedlings I’m waiting to see if they grow vigorously enough this season to flower here. I know they like summer heat, though, so that could be a problem. If you ever happen to be up by Seattle I’d be happy to share a couple with you, assuming they all wake up this spring I’ll have more than I need.
My seeds were from @JeremiahT, which he describes here with photos:
And I posted some photos of mine in the fall before they died back:
That makes me really want to hybridize some edulis with incarnaa…another year maybe.
P. caerulea is probably the best pollinizer for the PNW. Completely hardy there and produces very potent pollen. P. incarnata needs too much heat, and becomes very sensitive to wet feet in winter, when it doesn’t get lots of heat during the previous growing season.
If you or anyone is interested in seeds, I have many seeds from complex crosses involving edulis (purple + yellow), P. incarnata and P. cincinnata. Many (most?) seedlings from these may be root hardy to at least zone 8. Probably need more heat than available in the PNW, but who knows.
That’s what I was afraid of, but I’m trying some out anyhow. I don’t want to count my eggs before they’ve sprouted for spring, but my small incarnata seedlings from last season seem to have survived the very wet, cool winter here, with green stems at ground level. Here’s one that’s planted outside:
And the potted ones are outside again now, after spending some of the winter in the greenhouse. Those are starting to sprout (albeit with a pale color):
I also tried to grow P. maliformis in the ground in my greenhouse in 2021, and it grew to an enormous size in the first year, filling the rafters of the greenhouse, without flowering. It got some kind root pathogen over the winter after it dropped most of its leaves, and the vine rotted. The next year, a few feeble shoots came up from root fragments, but they never grew more than a few inches.
If incarnata proves too finicky for our climate, I’ll probably give up on Passifloras entirely. Unless anyone knows of any caerulea selections that actually taste good? Though @kiwinut’s crosses also sound very tempting! But I suspect our local soil has microbes that don’t play well with the genus.
Oh wow, that would be great. How do they taste? We have a lot of heat here actually. Summer highs are 85+ and with pretty much 0% cloud cover.
Passiflora capsularis is definitely self-fertile
Its not what I would call edible, though.
I do love that the fruit explode when ripe. I end up with seedlings in many of my pots.
Scott
They all have a very good flavor, but size varies a lot. The hardier ones are still alive (probably). I lost most of them a year and half ago, but I have lots of seeds in the refrigerator.
First flowers on my greenhouse incarnata vines, which I started from root cuttings last year. I assume it’s too late to hope for them to ripen, even in the greenhouse…
I think as long as it’s kept warm enough, they’ll ripen but it does take like 3-4 months for them to ripen though. Only thing i hate about Passionfruit
Last year the greenhouse vines died back to ground level in Oct/Nov even though it had not been below freezing in there. Seemed like incarnata might switch to winter dormancy even without actually getting a frost?
Not sure about incarnata but i grew purple possum, red rover, and 1 other edulis type.
I currently have one growing from seed that i bred from purple possum and one of the other 2 i named. Seed was out for about 2 years and still sprouted out of all the seeds i made. This year will be my first year outside of the house with it.
Have McCain, panama red, red rover, purple possum and i think another one who’s name i can’t remember as well, that’s all growing outside right now. This will also be my first year with them outdoors as well so we’ll see how they do in a greenhouse
Are any of these tetraploid?
If you are asking about the crosses involving edulis (purple + yellow), P. incarnata and P. cincinnata, some are mostly tets and some are mostly diploids. The seeds from a diploid seed parent are mostly diploid or near diploid, and the seeds from tet parents are mostly tet or near tet. This is because the pollen parent I used is a very fertile triploid and the seed parents tend to “filter out” seeds that are too far off from their own ploidy levels.
Very cool! I’ve some tetraploid crosses that have done very well for me. I’ve been on the lookout for other tetraploid hybrids to cross them with.
I’m in eastern NC, borderline between 8a and 8b.
If those are all edulis varieties (I think so?) then I would suggest taking some cuttings before the first frost, because edulis does not seem to regrow from the roots the way incarnata does. They will likely die completely over the winter (unless we have the warmest winter on record, which is actually quite possible with how quickly the PNW is warming). You may be able to root the cuttings indoors on a heating pad to plant them out after last frost.
I’ve never succeeded in Passionfruit cuttings and I’ve tried every year. Maybe this year will be different if you want some to test out as well, let me know. I’m about to chop them down in about a week.