YOUR SHOPPING CART: 0 ITEMS
Join Us on Facebook
Subscribe to Our Blog
Join Our Email List
How to Grow Passionfruit and Maypops
Topic: How-To Tips
Passionfruit
Illustration by Steve Asbell
For this final installment of my unusual fruit series, I think I've saved the best for last. Passionfruits are quintessentially exotic, from their ornate and often fragrant flowers to their sweet and tangy fruits.
One of the most oft repeated bits of trivia about the passion flower concerns their symbolism. Missionaries to the Americas saw the flower's arrangement and recalled the Passion of the Christ. The five sepals and five petals collectively represent the ten loyal apostles, the fringed corona resembles the crown of thorns, and the five styles represent the five wounds. Since the Passiflora genus can be found throughout North and South America, this striking metaphor could be used by missionaries from modern day Pennsylvania to Argentina. Even if you're not a religious person, it's hard not to look at the miraculously intricate sunbursts of flowers and not feel a sense of wonder--and we haven't even gotten to the fruit yet.
Passion flower
Photo by Steve Asbell
Not all of the passionfruits are edible, and only a handful could be considered delicious, but the best cultivars would give any manmade dessert a run for its money.The golfball sized fruits of P. edulis and P. incarnata are just the beginning. For example, P. mollissima's long fruits have earned it the name 'banana passionfruit' and P. quadrangularis or the "giant granadilla" approaches the size of a football.
To eat any of the edible passionfruits, cut the fruit in half and scoop out the pulp, fiber-rich seeds and all. I like to suck on a few jelly coated seeds at a time, savoring them like hard candies before saving the seeds for planting. They keep well in the fridge in between nibbles too! Here are the two passionfruits that you're most likely to encounter.
Passionfruit (Passiflora edulis)
This is the type of passionfruit that finds its way into fruit juice, sorbets and candy around the world, and the one that will taste most familiar. This one will survive in zones 9a and up, though in colder parts of its range you should offer protection in the form of several inches of mulch in winter. Some varieties like the yellow fruited 'McCain' will flower and fruit at a smaller size, and are suitable for container culture. 'Possum Purple' is the most popular variety, and it will easily form fruit without hand pollination. Like most fashion fruit plants, P. edulis varieties all do best with plenty of room to ramble without engulfing nearby trees and shrubs.
Maypop (Passiflora incarnata)
Have you ever seen passion flowers growing on the side of the road? If laws and safety permit, drop everything and look for rounded egg shaped fruits dangling on the thicker portions of the stems. If the fruits are yellow or orange, they're ripe and ready to eat right off the vine. I kid you not, I have actually pulled over on a few occasions to admire the flowers and pick the ripe fruit, and the juicy, tangy pulp are just what the doctor ordered on a hot summer afternoon. Hollow fruits 'may pop' if stomped upon, but the name maypop is actually derived from the Native American name for the fruit--Maracock.
How to Grow Passionfruit and Maypops
Since most passion fruits aren't self fertile, they'll need to be pollinated by a different plant to produce fruit. Luckily, butterflies love passion flowers so much that they rely upon them as host plants and will happily lend a hand! The caterpillars of such butterflies as zebra longwings and gulf fritillaries will quickly devour the leaves, but they'll quickly return in just a few days.
Gulf Fritillary Butterfly
Photo by Steve Asbell
That same vigor makes them a bit of a bully in the garden though, so be prepared to cut back any wandering tendrils or root sprouting suckers when they appear. I've returned to my garden after only two weeks to find it completely swallowed up by the greedy vines of my passion flowers! The best place to grow them is on a horizontal trellis, or more conveniently, a fence. Train one stem up to the top of the support, hold it in place, and prune the tip just above the base of a leaf. As new growth emerges, train the new stems horizontally along the top of the support, since passion flowers produce the most flowers on fruit on stems that drape down. Continue removing suckers from the ground to devote more strength to the main stems, or dig them up for transplanting elsewhere.
Once the flowers have been pollinated, fruit will begin to form at the base of the shriveled flowers before swelling up to the size on an egg, turning yellow, orange or purple (depending on the variety and species) and begin to shrivel slightly. This means it's ready to eat!
Topics
| Flowers | Friday Fun |
| Garden Recipes | Greenland Gardener Products |
| Growing Fruits | How-To Tips |
| Indoor Gardening | Photos |
| Raised Bed Gardening | Seeds |
| Trees and Shrubs | Vegetables |
| Wordless Wednesday |
Greenland Garden of the Week!
Aziem K.
Raised Bed Garden Kits
Greenland Gardener Raised Bed Garden Kits (shown above) are the perfect way to get started in raised bed gardening. Choose from several sizes.
