You are here: Home / 2 Native Plants / Vines / A Passion for Passion Vines

Vines, any vines, are great in the garden. Three reasons. First of all, vines need very little root space to flourish, thus they can fit in even the smallest yard. Second, many vines have beautiful flowers, and the bloom period can last for months, offering an opportunity to fill your yard with color. Third, and in my book best of all, many vines produce food, fiber, and other usable products (grapes for wine, hops for beer, I could go on). Tops on my vine list for my backyard, with trouble-free growth, ample fruit production, and amazing blooms for months, not to mention butterflies galore — passion vine, or Passiflora.

Called variously passion flower, passion fruit and just plain passion vine, Passiflora has over 500 species and countless varieties, most with edible fruit. Notable is the passion vine that bears fruit for the Hawaiian Punch blend. That particular species (Passiflora edulis), does best in an area of high humidity and light freezes, but chances are good there is a passion vine species native to your area of the country. Best of all, most species fruit in their first year!

But before you bite into any passion fruit, you have to know that the way to eat them is to slit open the leathery outer rind and feast on the sweet flesh and seeds inside. Passion fruit can store for at least a month in the ‘fridge, but if you leave ripe fruit on the vine, the birds will get them.

Plant this vine for the striking flowers as well as the tasty fruit. The flowers come in purples, reds and other vivid combinations of colors. Most blooms are very large, and look like some sort of alien space ship.

Plant this vine for the butterflies. It is the larval host plant for the gulf fritillary, also called the passion butterfly (Agraulis vanillae), a striking orange and brown butterfly. The larvae are striking as well, orange and black with spikes all over. It clearly says, “Don’t mess with me!” The voracious larvae can really eat, but so far my plants have all recovered from their depredations.

In Tucson Arizona, the best passion vine to plant is the native Sonoran passion vine, Passiflora foetida. At least that is what it is called around here. Common names for the plant include running pop, love-in-a-mist, stinking passion flower, wild maracuja, bush passion fruit, marya-marya, and wild water lemon. That same species is said to be native to a number of warm states. What ever you call it, the bloom appears the same. Stunning!

The plants sold here as “Sonoran passion vine” open their blooms at night, releasing a heavy, musky scent that draws in bats and the giant sphinx or hummingbird moths. Blooms last into the daylight hours, and I have seen queen, monarch, and gulf fritillary butterflies all at the same time on the flowers. (Now there are some species fun to try to tell apart when they are flitting about!)

A fast grower, a single Passiflora foetida plant can cover 20 by 15 feet in a year. The plant is covered with bloom from March to first freeze, and the fruits ripen in four to six weeks, all throughout the summer. I planted mine under a mesquite tree and it weaves handsomely up through the foliage. Passion flower will not choke the tree like some of the aggressive vines. It usually dies to the ground every winter but quickly resprouts every spring, as soon as the soils warm in late February.

Some botanists argue for a subspecies, slightly different than the original. Baja passion flower vine (Passiflora foetida v. longipedunculata), has more showy flowers that last to mid-day. It will also die back to the ground in a hard freeze, but despite low teens for days on end this past winter, the vine has resprouted (although it is blooming late this year). Generally they start blooming in March, and last through October. Like their Arizona cousin, Baja passion vine is a fast grower and one plant can cover 20 by 15 feet. The fruits of both varieties are equally edible. My only problem is that I should have planted them on an arbor so I could harvest them more easily!

Along with the fruit, young leaves and plant tips are considered edible, and are served in the Philippines. I prefer to leave the leaves on the plant to photosynthesize and thus make more sugars that can be spent in producing pretty flowers and tasty fruit.

Sonoran and Baja passion vines prefer well-drained soils, and they are especially happy in enriched garden soil. The USDA data base notes that the species is also found in Texas, Maryland, Florida and Hawaii. Ideally, visit a local nursery get plant grown from seed or cuttings of the germplasm that grows best in your state.

Note to stamp lovers: check out the passion flowers featured in the new “La Florida” set of US stamps. Celebrating the quincentennial of the first Spanish expedition to Florida, the stamps come on a sheet of sixteen stamps, featuring four beautiful flower stamps. I spent more than was in the budget just to have these lovely forever stamps to send on birthday cards.

© 2013, Jacqueline Soule. All rights reserved. This article is the property of Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens. We have received many requests to reprint our work. Our policy is that you are free to use a short excerpt which must give proper credit to the author, and must include a link back to the original post on our site. Please use the contact form above if you have any questions.