Passion fruit

Found some wild passion fruit growing down the street. Some of them are the size of a lemon and are green. Are they good to eat? How do I know when to pick them?

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Presumably P. incarnata, since you’re in 7a Virginia. When they’re wrinkly, heavy, fragrant and fall from the plant. You’ve a bit of a wait yet; mine usually start ripening toward fall.

Maypops are variable in flavor, but some are quite good.

Thank you

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No problem, Dean! Let us know how they taste if you get a chance to sample some later this season. I think it’s a great native plant that’s ripe for some breeding/selection work.

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Can you take a photo of the fruit and the leaves? I scanned through dozens of photos on iNaturalist and noticed some leaf and fruit variations. Some leaf lobes are set at more obtuse angles than others and some fruit are round like an orange or oval like a lemon.

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I just hope the field doesn’t get mowed before they ripen. I need to see if cuttings root, or maybe I can just dig one up.

I will take pictures tomorrow.

They die back to the ground each year and regrow in the spring so I doubt mowing them would kill them…definitely the fruit will be worm food, although you might be able to harvest the seeds. I back up to a neglected section of commercial property and I have learned that if I want to see something grow over there I just throw some sticks around the general area and the mowers just avoid that patch of grass :joy:.

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They ought to be fairly easy to transplant—especially the suckers. And they throw a lot of suckers. Root cuttings should also work. Seeds are not hard to germinate, if you can get mature seeds; though in my experience the germination rates are not really high. Ripe interior with mature arils looks like this:

I like Jeremy’s stick idea! :grin: My neigbhors Bush-Hogged most of the big stand in the overgrown fencerow next to our property line (the one I liked to eat from) a couple of years ago, so I started growing my own from local seed. The mowing didn’t kill them—they popped back from the roots the next year as if nothing had happened—but it definitely destroyed the majority of fruit that season. Of course, this ability to regenerate from the extensive roots can be a double-edged sword: be sure to plant maypops where you can get errant suckers with a lawn mower or something. A wild one was critter-seeded in my gooseberry bed and two years later I’m still pulling suckers! Not hard to do, as they pull up readily—but it needs doing often!

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I learned growing them in a pot is the only way keep from acting like kudzu vine!
Took two years of pulling to completely eradicate them.

Take pictures please.


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My wife informed me that this is maypop.

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Yesterday the city sprayed herbicide on the maypop. At least i got to dig up a few beforehand. I’m going to try to collect some seed from the sprayed fruit.