PlantFiles: Blue Passion Flower, Hardy Passionflower, Passion Vine, Passionvine
Passiflora caerulea

This plant has taken over our garden. It throws up suckers everywhere, strangling shrubs and trees. I did not plant this passionfruit, so I suspect it is the root stock of a grafted one that died. The flowers, of course, are really beautiful, but are not worth it, due to its aggressive nature. I live in a warm mediterranean climate. I suspect it is much less agressive in cooler areas.
regards
W:)

i have my plant for a few years now and it grows/flowers like crazy. my experience is that this plant doesn´t grow well without much heat and sun. it loves sun an heat, it can never be to hot for this plant. my plant stands in a big green house and grows more than 5m per growing season. in the summer some places in the greenhouse are so hot that you burn your hands when you touch them. i can´t understand how plant part can survive there, they look all very healthy and even seem to like it there. i have so many little plants of my big plant that i don´t know what to do with them, when you want some of my very healthy plants please contact me.

We've had a tropical passionflower for many years that we take inside for the winter. I was pleased to find a hardy variety this year. I planted it in full sun, although the bottom of the plant gets shade from a rose bush. I am using it to cover a clothesline pole that is cemented in our garden and stands about 20 feet tall. My plan this spring is to cover the entire pole with chicken wire so the passionflower goes straight up it. It's very powerful so you have to be careful not to let it grab onto anything else. It grows fast. I planted it in July and it's taller than me already. I will mulch the base of the plant and hope to see it again in the spring.

Being a landscaper I'm always looking for interesting additions to make my clients gardens more unique. I got a blue passion flower (Passiflora Caerules) grown by Monrovia who apparently has the real secret to the finest in organic soils/growth mediums. Because only in a 5 gallon pot. I had two of them completely cover the other in growth to the point I got tired of trying to separate them and clipped the last few. They are both covered in blooms and the one I planted on a trellis 3 days ago has already grown 10 inches in 72 hours!
My only concern is the winter, when I plan to protect the heck out of it. I heard if you get a used aquarium it is a good substitute for a cold frame, (because my clematis and trumpet vine survive winters just fine). But if anyone wants to start with a good specimen instead of chancing to grow them from seed, (this way you are sure of plant variety), get the one from Monrovia growers. They are awesome! I'll keep you posted on their winter survival.

This plant is far, far hardier in the US than in the UK.
Because of our wetter, gloomier winters and less well-drained soil,it will only tolerate -8 C, and will be defoliated at -5C.

The recocommended solution is to plant it in soil that is over 50% gravel and sharp sand - but you can do even more to ensure its survival. One expert places a 2 ft square of polystyrene around the base, another idea is to also place waterproof plasic sheeting around the base to protect it from the wet. Quick simple measures which will make all the difference.

Using these methods it may be possible to grow the more colourful species - even in Britain.

I thought this plant was lovely, but it didn't attract as many butterflies to it as I was hoping it would...since I purchased it for the sole purpose of it being a host plant. Although we had several males of various Fritillary butterfly species (Variegated, Regal, and the Great Spangled), there were no females around to lay eggs. I will experiment next year with this Hardy Blue Passion Vine on one side of our yard and the Maypop Passion Vine on the other side and see if there is a difference in it's attractiveness for the butterflies next year...it should prove to be interesting!

I am growing it in a clay pot and it has not bloomed yet. i think our summer heat of 100F+ is too much for it to make blooms. anyway, i have kept its root cool by mulching and it receives full sun. It is growing very fast through its tendrils but no blooms so far. I have avoided fertilizing it as it requires poor soil to bloom but no avail. its size is 4 feet high now.

This plant is terribly invasive here. I'm not certain if the pretty flowers are worth the fight to keep the vines out of places where I don't want them.

I was given this plant in the fall as a bit of root and about a 2 foot long vine with maybe 3 leaves on it. I took it out of the bubble envelope and tossed it in a pot thinking it would never make it. It is now almost Spring, this wonderful guy is still in my office and climbing the wall. There has been no flowers but I am hoping to plant it in a nicer pot in the Spring and let it go mad outside as soon as the weather permits.
As much as this plant has endured with shipping, cold weather, low sun, and general neglect-I am very impressed with it. A wonderful bit of green when all else is white and brown!!

Purchased this at a nursery where it was listed as maypops. It wasn't. Maypops is a host plant for the Gulf Fritillary and is a native to the southeast. Blue passion flower is introduced and I have found it to be very aggressive. In one season we had plants emerging as much as 8 feet away from the parent. Flowers only lasted a day and nothing pollinated them. Maypops is a much better choice since it is native and is a host plant for butterflies.

This plant grows like a weed! At least here in California. If it weren't for all the caterpillars stripping it of every vestige of green, it might be a nice plant. But at least it produces massive quantities of fruit (my guess is my 1 year old seedling produced at least 200 fruits this year).. At least the Frittalary caterpillars don't seem to affect fruit production, nor do they damage the fruits.... sadly the fruits are 90% hollow, with only a 'dollop' of barely edible bright red seeds inside. My parrot loves them though, and considers them a delicacy. Flowers are outstanding, of course.

We planted our Passion flower, from a two gallon pot we purchased at the nursery. I planted it straight from the pot into my garden, full sunshine in May. At first it just sat there and did nothing, I worried It was going to die. Then about a month later It took off an started growing like wild fire, the trellis I had it on was overtaken in about 45 days. Now I fight with it each day to keep it out of my Azalia bushes. It blooms daily. I am dissapointed that the blooms only last a day though. They have no fragrence here. But the blooms are lovely. I am concerned with how to care for it over the winter, and I am going to have to move it to the fence to give it more room of it's own and to let it climb. It is fun to watch.

My Passion Vine was planted in late 2005 and grew very well during 2006, but no blooms. Now, in 2007, the plant has produced over 80 blooms and is still forming new flower buds. In spite of a continuing drought, I am amazed at how well the plant is doing on nothing but a little liquid fertilizer (Peters) and city water. Docturf (july 31, 2007)

I am in zone 7, NC. I recommend it! But give it room. I sprouted one seed of this and planted it in the ground, in good soil mixed with some sand for drainage, in full sun, and next to a pond. It gets watered every 2 days by a watering system, and it grows like a weed!

It is evergreen here, and its a huge green mob that has taken over a rosemary bush and the entire deck railing and is coming up from between the floor boards, and popping up in the dirt on the other side of the pond. We have to cut it back once a week or its reaching across the walkway by the pond. Its making its first flowers now, in its second year, and its got a ton of them. It doesn't seem to get any diseases, and though it seems the fritillary butterfly caterpillars are using it as a host plant, they don't eat enough of it to even be noticeable.

Cuttings root easily if kept moist and left short with only 1 leaf on them (I've had less success with cuttings that have more than 1 leaf). I've tried both with rooting hormone and without, and saw no difference in results.

I've grown this Passiflora for years here in my PNW garden. It has stayed green throughout mild winters and would flower earlier than when it has died back.
I've only gotten fruit one time and it rotted before it fully ripened. I think it must need a longer heat period than we get here.

i live on vancouver island in the great pacific northwest, and i have had WONDERFUL success over the past 3 years with my passionflower vine, until THIS YEAR..it is now june 2, 2007 and it is still a mass of wood stock not even a hint of green there, i am wondering if i should cut it back NOW, or perhaps fertilize it and see what happens with it...any help with regards to this would be appreciated...thanks marianne

I love this plant!!! i have had it for about a year and has given me extreme pleasure.The flowers smell gorgeous too and does anyone know if it will fruit in a large tub (3ftX3ft) ta

I purchased this plant last April. I planted it against a fence where it gets am sun and late afternoon shade. It 's growing very well, but it is still a smalish size-4ft and it now has 12 blooms at various stages of development. I got this one because I read that it is useful for polinating the tasty fruit bearing varieties.The butterflies also love it .

I started this plant from seed about 2 ½ years ago, and the first summer the seedling didn't grow very much at all untill I brought it in for the winter when it REALLY took off. It must have grow at least 4 ½ to 5 feet in its first winter! And I only had it in a 3½ in pot in a north east window! Then I took it outside in mid May...it got hit a bit by cold and was slow to get going but by the end of the summer it had really taken off and I got a few suckers popping up! I have no doubt it survived its first winter and now I'm waiting to see it in the spring!

LOVE this vine, roots so easy, prolific bloomer, does great in containers with a trellis.

Actually, I'm not sure whether it's caerulea I have. I know I had incarnata at one time, but that was years ago. And an extremely pretty, very purple hybrid--Amethyst, I guess.

Tell you the truth, this particular passionflower, the P. caerulea(?),invited itself into my garden, and thereby hangs its negative characteristic: it's invasive. Up to you whether the striking flowers are worth the hassle of whacking away with a machete or enduring your neighbor's curses. For me, I saw this weed burst into bloom just before Hurricane Whoozie, and I was enchanted. (The hurricane knocked down the blooms, but I got some more.)

Curious thing: the passionflower, both plants, has/have settled on the NORTH side of the house, one along a brick wall and one attempting to strangle my pineapples. (For which it will get executed.)

UPDATE Thanks to the photos on this and other sites, and thanks to the plant's throwing out a few more blooms, I now know that I have P. incarnata, not P. caerulea. The hybrid forms seem to be prettier (i.e., more purple).

I purchased a plant about four years ago and lost it over the winter.
My father told me it used to grow in the woods when he was a child and they called it "Maypop". He died at age 87 three years ago.
Today my husband and I found the vine in several places on property we have purchased and in one area the vine has fruit. The fruit is green now and about two inches long. I am very excited about finding it and will try to get it started in our yard.

Would love seeds for this plant

I got a blue passionflower through the mail a year ago and planted it. Most of the stem died in the winter but it sprung back and is now over four feet! Flower buds are appearing. A more attractive kind than the native but gulf fritillaries don't seem to like it as much. A great vine for the garden but does have an extensive amount of roots and may climb onto nearby plants, so give it a trellis and some space.

My Passion Flower has grown beautifully in Sierra Vista, Arizona. The only thing I do not care for is how it dies back completely and has to start over each Spring. It does grow fast though.

Edgewood, Washington
Being a child of the late 40's I remember the passion vine as a plant that had me hooked on horticulture as it was so exotic and strange. Resembling an alien from the Saturday science fiction movies. Have to laugh, when we would visit family in warm California they all called it the "shithouse vine". As it was so prevalently grown to cover outhouses. This plant still has me under its spell 50 years later.

I am in Puyallup Washington, 30 miles South of Seattle. I just went out today 11/1/03 to check my Rockery garden as we had a hard freeze. I wanted to see how everything was reacting to the cold. My blue passion flower was not only still blooming and beautiful but.. as I poked around I found fruit !!!! This was a first year plant, about 6" tall that my daughter had given me, that was half dead in her yard. She stuck it in my yard in May hoping I would have better luck than she had. I just ignored it as I didn't know what it was, other than to spray a little Miracle Grown on it every now and then. Today I untangled 1 of the 6 vines and it is about 35 feet long. I have it growing in a circular shape on a low wood trellis, for lack of anything else to do with it.
The soil is very rocky, with a lot of sand and very little actual dirt. It has been a joy to watch the flowers all summer. The kids stop by to see how it is as they enjoy the flowers so well. Wait till they see the fruit!!!! : ))

Fun plant. This plant needs full sun in cooler climates to flower well. Can be invasive but is also very easy to control by cutting back runners every few weeks. I grow mine right in the middle of my main garden bed on a trellis.

This is also a very easy plant to root via stem cuttings. Simply take a 8-12" cutting of a mid season vine and stick it in a glass of water. Will root in approx. 4 weeks.

I grew this plant from seeds nine years ago. It was the first time I got sucessful with seedlings. Since I didn´t have much room, I selected the three strongest plants and replanted them. After a while, when the plantlets were still less than 10cm tall, they got attacked by caterpillars. Amazingly, they survived, and started growing again.

My vines grew to 5 meters long, but they weren´t getting much light. I live in an apartment, so there was no way I could put them under full sun, but they persisted anyway. After 5 years they were about to bloom when I noticed they were drying. I saw the base of the stem, and it was totally rotten. All three plants died at the same time.

Passion Flowers are very susceptible to a number of diseases and parasites. Anyone who wants to plant it must be very careful with their plants.

It grows real well in Texas, just be sure it doesn't get near other plants in your garden because the runners will take them over. Ours grows really well on the edge of the woods and does great without any care. The flowers grow hardy but with little or no smell it seems, but the flowers are a nice touch as a border on the edge of the woods surrounding the house.

I see this plant is listed as "hardy" and I have microclimates in my southern Ontario garden that approximate zone 6 or 6b. However, our winters can range from quite mild with little snow and ice to winters like the one we just had which was very icy.

I'm wondering if I could successfully over-winter this plant in a protected spot, with added protection such as hilling up & using a thick layer of mulch.

Mine has been growing well on a fence for three years. Very hardy since my dog digs part of it up every year and chews the stem. I replant it and it's ok. This is a specific food plant for the caterpillar stage of the Gulf Fritillary butterfly. The coccoons look like twisted dried leaves stuck on the fence. I harvest flowers before caterpillars come and after their season.

The flowers feel almost like plastic. When dried, they have a mild cucumber scent. Tea from flowers or leaves can be used as a sedative or sleep aid. Works well in about 20 minutes with no side effects. Flower is interesting when dried face down with light weight applied.

The plant was named by missionary monks in South America because the parts resemble items from Crucifixion. Mine has never fruited but it's a very striking flower, much admired by neighbors. Great for show-n-tell at school.

Fast growing climber from South America.

Has mid-dark green leaves with 3-9 (more usually 5) lobes. Bears large, white sometimes blushed with pale pink flowers with blue/purple and white banded corona fillaments. Followed by orange, eg shaped fruit with an insipid flavour.

Likes a well drained, fertile soil in sun or partial shade.

Ours came into the garden via a bird sown seed from a neighbours plant. Within a year it was flowering and trying to pull down the fence. It's since been supported properly. Another grows over the chicken house to provide shade and some rain protection for the birds, they enjoy the fruit it drops too