Did you wind up trying to grow Granadilla? I’m considering it as an annual to start indoors next Spring but not sure if I even have time to get a small crop before our first hard frost. Google tells me these can handle a light frost.
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You might need to start them indoors now, according to the CABI datasheet for P. ligularis, even in ideal growing areas it’s 9+ months to flower, then nearly 3 months more to ripen:
Reproductive biology
P. ligularis is allogamous and will start flowering about 9-10 months after planting and 75-85 days later, fruit are ready for harvest (Bernal, 1988). Pollination is performed by bumble bees (Epicharis), honey bees (Apis mellifera) and a large wasp. Trigona bees are sporadically found. The flower opens for only 1 day and the pollen is not viable early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Manual pollination may be required when there is poor insect activity (Duarte and Paull, 2015).
Edit:
Actually it’s even longer, because that says “after planting,” and it says this earlier in the datasheet:
The plant is most commonly propagated by seed, and is planted in orchards 65-80 days after germination.
And also in terms of a temperatures:
The ideal range is between 16 and 24°C, with an optimum of 16-18°C or even 12-15°C in the Cusco area of Peru (Mamani-Quispe, 2000); it is intolerant of heat and thrives in humid conditions.
. . .
It will not withstand frost. In southern Peru when planted above 2200 m, the rainfall is less than further to the north, and temperatures cooler, growth is slow and production low. At higher temperatures, the plant requires more water and fertilizer; yields improve but the chances of Nectria infection increase, especially if above 20°C, while below 10°C, lower flowering and higher fruit abscission rates occur (Duarte and Paull, 2015).
This table is also included that gives an absolute minimum temperature of 2°C (36°F):
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No, I just have the Maypops which didn’t do very good this year. They popped up everywhere but just wouldn’t grow for some reason?
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Yikes. Between our planned monthlong vacation during winter and the fact that it grows so much, I may pass. May. I saw some sellers on ETSY that sell started plants. Buying started plants rather than seeds in January might be worth trying. The problem with that is shipping!
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There are multiple species sold as Grenadilla. All except one are toast below 40°F.
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I have some hybrids between maypop and more tropical species that are doing quite well for me so far, even setting fruit. Don’t know about hardiness or how good the fruit is yet. I’ll get some more pictures later and post a bit more information.
Passion fruit, other than just straight maypop, in zone 8? I’d give it a tentative yes.
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When was that one germinated & planted out? My second leaf maypop seedlings are still a few inches tall here in Seattle, maybe next year they will grow enough to start flowering. The more tropical ones I’ve tried have all died even in my greenhouse.
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I don’t know when it was germinated, as I bought these from someone on ebay (passiflorista is the shop name, highly recommend!), but they were about a foot long when I planted them in ground, I believe in May. I nearly lost them to slugs though, as it took me two months to actually get around to trellising them. Blooming began probably a month ago, though I only got the first fruit set two weeks ago, despite hand pollinating the first dozen or so flowers. A hummingbird has thankfully taken over the task of pollinating (she is also a tiny bully–she’s constantly chasing butterflies and bees away from the flowers, the greedy little urchin…).
These are supposed to be a mixture of P. incarnata, P. cincinata, and P. edulis, I think roughly in that order of proportion of genetics. They are also tetraploid, and it shows (much thicker stems, bigger flowers).
Again, I’ll post more pictures once I get a minute to take some… There’s a fair bit of variation between the four vines that I have.
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Flowers most vines are dark. Initially, one vine seemed darker and more purple, but either it’s not blooming right now or the other vines have darkened. Hard to say since they now overlap each other a good bit. Each plant has between 10-20 ft of vine, I’d say. One vine has very different flowers, but also appears to not produce any pollen, though it has set fruit so it is at least female fertile.
The fruits are large and somewhat pubescent so far.
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Those look very happy! By comparison, here are my 1.5 year old maypops, which I posted recently in this other thread:
I think it’s just not warm enough here, or there’s something in our soil biome that disagrees with them.
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Many passionflowers work well in pots. I’ve got almost a dozen potted plants and almost all of them flower for me each year.
P Capsularis will easily flower and fruit in a single season (in zone 6) though the fruit are not palatable. I try to keep the fruit picked off the plant, not because doing so encourages better flowering but because the fruits explode when ripe and then I end up with seedlings in all surrounding pots.
Funny, even with having grown these for over a decade I’ve never gotten any of the caterpillars.
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Those poor little sun lovers…
They definitely seem to require lots of heat and sun. Mine didn’t really take off for a while. Granted, they were probably putting down roots, and the slugs really, really did a number on them. But once they were trellised and the peak of summer arrived, they took off.
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my maypops are in 50%+ shade and bloom well. They don’t ripen their fruit every year, though
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That’s a fair point. Thinking back to the wild ones I used to eat, they often grew on field margins and wood lines.
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Mine (maypop) seem to be comfortable with early morning sun then dappled afternoon. This is its first full year in the ground so I don’t have any clue if they will ripen up. So far they look good and the bees enjoy them so its a win in my book.
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I’m not an expert but that looks like “incense.” I hav Ethan one and have not had a fruit off of it, but I hear iffy reports about flavor. They say that most hybrids are sterile. They may even set fruit but they will be empty.
The three dark ones are unarmed seedlings. These are supposed to be related to Incense, or at least a hybrid with the same parents, so it makes sense they look similar.
I could be wrong, but my notes say Incense is an F1 hybrid of P. incarnata and P. cincinnata. These plants also have such an F1 in their ancestry, but I don’t know if it was Incense, Blue Velvet, or some other hybrid.
The one white fringed plant is P. “Marjorie Sherwin.” My notes, which could totally be wrong as I just scribbled down some stuff while shopping around, have it as:
Complex hybrid, (P. incarnata x P. Edulis “Ugly Betty”) x (P. “Bucky” x (P. incarnata x P. Edulis f flavicarpa “Norfolk Island” “Byron Beauty”))
I guess it’s not surprising it’s pollen sterile with that family tree… All of these seem reluctant to fruit, only a few set per plant, at least so far. Fruits are heavy though, so I’m thinking they’re not hollow. We’ll see 
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Tricky to weigh while still on the vine, but this one certainly doesn’t seem hollow. I had read that a lot of hybrids often have very poor seed set, and hence hollow fruit. I’m guessing that’s what the tetraploid doubling is supposed to help with. That, and for larger flowers, though ironically the larger flowers make it hard even for carpenter bees to pollinate them, especially when they do this yoga pose:
Though it does make hand pollinator pretty easy haha
Also, between me and the birds and the bees doing work, there are now seven fruits set.
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Probably ought to include links to the fellow who sold them to me.
The seedlings
The named variety
Jim’s user page
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Where did you get Ugly Betty? I asked the guy who bred it and he said that he doesn’t sell anymore. Is it tasty?
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