The newest passion

Okay, this may be another example of me putting my ignorance on display for the world's amusement, but I never connected "passion vines" and "passion flowers" with the incredible flavorful passion fruit. So imagine my delight when I learned that the dozens upon dozens of gorgeous passion flowers blooming in the front of our house (see below) will all turn into edible passion fruit if we just add another variety of passiflora to act as a pollinator.



After checking the excellent online resources Garden Web and Passiflora Online, I learned several things. 1) the varietal I have is most likely the hybrid called "Incense," which produces beautiful flowers, is very hearty and fast-growing, but makes only so-so fruit; 2) there are infinitely more passion flower species out there than I had ever suspected; 3) people get very, very into growing passiflora, particularly with developing new hybrids; and 4) there's a huge, thriving market for passiflora on eBay. I'm not sure what I'm going to be getting yet--must do more research--but golly, I can feel a new obsession coming over me.

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