blue passionflower

Photo: Franz van Duns — CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Survives zone 7 through 9

Harvest calendar

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Ornamental passionflower — fruit small and largely insipid. ⚠ Ripe fruit only, and not much of it — unripe fruit and the foliage of this species contain cyanogenic glycosides.

Hardiness

Zone 7–9

Habit

Vine

Edible part

Flower, Fruit

Ripens

Late summer–autumn

Mature size

Vine 5–10 m; tender types want a container or greenhouse in cool climates

Light

Full sun

Soil pH

6.0–7.0

Environment

Subtropical

Native range

South America — Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, southern Brazil and Chile; woodland edge and riverbank thickets.

Status

Ornamental

Years to fruit

1–3 yrs

Growth speed

3–5 m/year — very fast, capable of 20 m where it has trees to climb.

Spacing

250 cm (98 in) apart — about 6.3 m² (67 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Alternate, palmately 5-lobed like a spread hand (sometimes 3 or 7), up to 18 cm long and about as wide, deep green and hairless.

Root system

Vigorous, fibrous and strongly suckering — it throws shoots up some distance from the crown and is hard to remove once settled.

Fruit description

Ovoid orange berries about 4–6 cm long with pale seedy pulp; edible and safe when fully ripe but bland and rather dry compared with a true passionfruit — grown far more for the extraordinary flower than the crop.

Propagation

Seed germinates in 2–4 weeks from fresh, scarified seed. Semi-ripe stem cuttings of non-flowering shoots taken in late spring or summer root under cover; layering works too, since trailing stems root where they touch.

Pollination

Largely self-sterile — among the more self-apt species in the genus, but fruit set on a lone plant is poor and unreliable. A second, genetically different plant improves it markedly. Insect-pollinated by large bees; hand-pollination is common in cultivation.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.