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Last year I germinated a seed from a shop bought passionfruit and it is now a great big vine growing on our conservatory ceiling. It's doing well and today the first two flowers have opened. But they are white, the passionfruit I remember always had blue/purple and white flowers. Can anyone shed any light on what variety of passionfruit this vine might be? I've done some googling and I cannot find any mention of a pure white flower, they all (even the yellow fruiting varieties) have blue and white flowers. The fruit I germinated this seed from was a large, thick skinned purple fruit, the pulp was edible and had a lovely flavour. It would be a variety used in commercial production as it was bought from Tesco, I don't remember it's country of origin. Here's a photo of what the flowers look like:

oooooh, an update and panic over ;D I've just checked the flowers again after reading something that got me thinking. I read that as the temperature warms up during the day the pollen grains begin to burst. Having checked the flowers again now, they are beginning to show a purple ring on the flower, the purple colour is coming from thousands of tiny pollen grains. I expect that by the end of the day with the heat after a day's sunshine, the flowers will look like I expected them to and be white and purple. I'll take another photo at the end of the day if this is the case. Very interesting and I've learnt something I didn't know, isn't nature clever :D

Hi Jesse,

there are of course white passion flowers, incarnata alba and subpeltata, but subpeltata has very different foliage to your plant. Also neither is widely used as edible plants, edulis being the common variety. The subspecies Tacsonia has been renamed Passiflora and there is an edible white variety, described in quote below

Passiflora ampullacea is one of the only white flowered Tacsonias. This Passiflora has not flowered yet in Northern California, but flowered in San Diego, in 1988. Fruits are reported to be larger and with a thicker rind than P. mollissima (NRC 1989). Hardiness is unknown. It is found in the mountains of Southern Ecuador at elevations of 2,600 to 2,800 m.

How to distinguish

The main characteristics that set the Tacsonia apart from other subgenera in the family are that the filaments are reduced to nubs or tubercles in the corona and the calyx tube is much longer than the sepals. The male and female parts are raised aloft by the narrow columnar gynophore. At the top of the gynophore is the ovary with 5 stamens below and 3 stigmas above.

I enclose the link for the article from which I have quoted.
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1993/v2-479.html

As you say, it'll probably turn out to the standard one!

Well done for finding that, I searched for ages and could only find the non-edible varieties to have white flowers, and as you say the leaves are very different to my one. Thanks :)

Can i ask one question did you put the seed straight into a pot with soil or keep in a jar of water until it germinated?

thanks

I'm pleased I kept a planting/sowing diary now because I had forgotten! On 4th March last year I sowed most of the seeds from one fruit, pulp washed off the seeds as much as possible, into pots of potting soil, dampened them down and covered with plastic and placed in the airing cupboard. After a couple of weeks (no dates recorded) they had showed no signs of germination so I moved them to to a sunny and warm windowsill (above a radiator). I guess at that time I needed the space in the airing cupboard for other seeds and had given up hope of these germinating. On 7th April one seed germinated. None of the other seeds germinated, so I guess this was the lucky one.

Here is a picture of it on 1st July last year, 3 months old.



during the winter it lost lots of it's leaves and in January it started to show signs of new growth and new leaves:



at the end of April it produced it's first signs of flower buds



and now today the first flower has opened. :D What the photos can't show is how big it is, it really does sprawl and grow quickly and covers a good part of our conservatory ceiling.

That is amazing, i am going to buy a passion fruit tomorrow and see i get on.  I love growing different/unusual things, currently i have two pineapples.  Thanks for your help.

I love passionflowers and started a thread elsewhere about cuttings.
I took three from a passionflower centaurea ( blue flowers), sat them in water for a little while then potted them into 3" pots.

They are now sitting in my unheated greenhouse and look healthy.

Fingers crossed, I might have them flowering outside next year, as they are hardy to -10 C.

Debs

I want to try taking cuttings from this one so will go and find your thread and have a read :). This is the edible variety which is not hardy and needs growing indoors. Veggie Mad, if you have no luck germinating seeds let me know and I'll send you some rooted cuttings if I'm successful.

Quote from: Jesse on May 19, 2006, 19:33:53
I want to try taking cuttings from this one so will go and find your thread and have a read :). This is the edible variety which is not hardy and needs growing indoors. Veggie Mad, if you have no luck germinating seeds let me know and I'll send you some rooted cuttings if I'm successful.

Thank you, fingers crossed one of the seeds will germinate!!

Tried to post link, not successful, so have repeated it:
You eat only the flesh of passion fruit, not the skin, seeds or leaves. When they start to come off the plant very easily, or drop on their own, and feel soft, they will be ripe.

thanks jennym, the link did work and I read the thread. It confirms what I've heard i.e. the fruit of the ornamental (hardy) passionflower is not tasty, the fruit of the edible (tender) vine is edible and are the ones you buy in supermarkets. They are ripe when the outer skin of the fruit is wrinkly and drop off the vine (you do get orange varieties as well but I don't know about them). The seeds and juice inside the fruit are edible, you wouldn't want to chew the seeds but the way we used to eat them was to cut the fruit in half, and scoop out the seeds, pulp and juice with a spoon and swallow. My parents had lots of passionfruit vines on our farm in SA and as a result we ate many fruits. If you were to separate the seeds from the pulp it would be a laborious task. I have a good family recipe for a passionfruit pudding if anyone grows a substantial crop. :)

It almost broke my heart when a neighbour who had a really fruitful plant in her back garden moved away - it used to be laden with luscious orange coloured fruits, and we all used to congregate round there on Bonfire night and scoff the lot! The new people dug it up within days  :(

so are the hardy ones edible too then? I have always been told that they don't taste as nice.

Tasted fine to me - luscious in fact!
The plant was grown very close to the brick walls of the house, so probably had the benefit of retained heat at night.