Passionflower, Purple

Description

Botanical Name: Passiflora incarnata

Common Name: Maypop Passion Vine, Purple Passionflower, Purple Passion Vine, Apricot Vine, Wild Apricot

Description:   This is a gorgeous perennial vine native to Florida. Fast growing twining vine that gets 5-15 feet long. The gorgeous and fragrant alien-looking flowers are about 3” in diameter with an intricate fringed central crown of wavy bluish-purple filaments banded with darker purple that radiate out above ten pale bluish-white petals and sepals. It blooms spring through summer. Likes sun, part sun, or part shade areas of your garden. Attaches itself by twining and can be grown as arbors, trellises, fences, walls, pillars, etc., or as a groundcover. Moderate deer resistance. Grows in well-drained, sandy, loamy, or clay soils. Drought tolerant after becoming established, but grows best with supplemental water during times of drought. Hummingbirds and butterflies get nectar from the flowers. Is mainly pollinated by bees, in particular bumblebees and carpenter bees. Its fruit may be eaten by songbirds, small mammals, and some larger mammals.

It does spread by rhizome suckers, so be prepared to do some maintenance to keep it in check.

Its native habitat is in disturbed, brushy areas or disturbed upland hardwood forest, sandhill, and scrub.

The egg-size edible fruit starts forming in the summer and ripens in the fall. The maypop fruit is ripe when it turns from green to light green to yellow-orange in color. A better indication of a ripe maypop is a somewhat wrinkly skin whereas the unripe maypop fruit will have a firm, tight feel. Can be eaten fresh or in preserves. Is tartly-sweet.

Is larval host plant to: Gulf Fritillary butterfly, Zebra Longwing butterfly, Crimson-patch longwing butterfly, Red-banded hairstreak butterfly, Julia butterfly, and Mexican butterfly.

Medicinal Value: Native Americans poulticed root for boils, cuts, earaches, and inflammation. Tea used to sooth nerves; Inca brewed tonic; crushed leaves in poultices on cuts and bruises.

Not salt tolerant of inundation by salty or brackish water. Some tolerance to salty wind but not direct salt spray.

This plant in 1-gallon containers is 8 – 24 inches long and is on a trellis.

Plant Lore: Documented in the Amazon by Spanish physician Nicolas Monardes in the 1560s, the leaves of the passionflower had long been used as a natural sedative by indigenous peoples, while the fruit was a favorite staple. The name Maypop comes from the hollow, yellow fruits that pop loudly when crushed. The genus name Passiflora is Latin for passio which means passion and flos which means flower. Incarnata is Latin for flesh-colored.

Florida Hardiness Zones 8 – 10