Fruit on the vine

Forgive me if I seem unseemly exited right now, but I've been holding my breath for a while and am finally confident enough to exhale. Why, you ask? Because of these, fruit on my passiflora tenuiloba vines:

Passiflora tenuiloba is a native Texas passion flower. It is very tiny, and thus not available in cultivation. That's a fancy way of saying you can't buy it at nurseries. Once I got into passion flowers in a big way 7 years ago or so, I decided to try growing all the native Texas species. This is one of the first I got--and promptly killed it by over-watering. Over the years, I acquired more through trades and even going out and digging some up (with the property owner's permission, of course). Maddeningly enough, most of those died from drought or being eaten by caterpillars or other such. The few times I coaxed blooms out of them, I only had one plant, and this species isn't self-fertile. So this summer, the one remaining tenuiloba I had in the ground beneath my big century plant seemed to be growing very well, and I was fortunate enough to acquire a couple new plants of unrelated parentage. Then disaster struck, when the neighbor's yard crew removed the trellis I had protecting the in-ground plant, and promptly mowed it down. I was, to put it kindly, not happy.

Fortunately, there is a happy ending to all this. The in-ground tenuiloba bounced back with surprising vigor, and began setting flower buds. Then, much to my surprise and delight, one of the potted tenuilobas set a few buds as well. Fast forward a few weeks, and I've got flowers opening at the same time. Hand-pollinating the flowers is no easy feat--they're barely a centimeter across--and juggling the tweezers and magnifying glass is a challenge. But my patience and perseverance is being rewarded with 11 tenuiloba passion fruit! Hopefully, I'll be able to coax some more out of the plants this fall, before all is said and done. And once they're ripe, I intend to contribute the bulk of the seeds to the Passiflora Society International seed bank, to make this interesting species available hither and yon.

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Tenuiloba

Back the other month, I had an unfortunate incident where the lawn men working on my neighbor's yard hacked up part of my century plant in the front yard and then proceeded to remove a small trellis and mow down a passiflora tenuiloba plant I'd had growing beneath the agave. Needless to say, I was livid, because the tenuiloba, after two years, had finally put out flower buds. I've been trying to grow this uncommon Texas native (it's not rare--it grows wild in parts of South and West Texas, but it isn't in cultivation and very difficult to find through nurseries) for years now, and bad things keep happening to my plants. I put up a new trellis to guard it, put down some organic fertilizer and made an effort to keep it watered during our ongoing drought. I was rewarded with it rebounding quite well, and wonder of wonders, flowering freely for me! The photos below are from the second bloom from the plant, taken with my Canon 7D and EF 100mm 2.8 macro lens utilizing a ring light for illumination.

The flowers are tiny, maybe half an inch/centimeter across, and easy to miss. The pretty colors blend together when just observed with the naked eye, and look like a dark brown. It's not until the flower is magnified that the maroon and yellow in the filaments become obvious. The bad news is that tenuiloba is not self-fertile. I have another clone of the species I bought earlier this summer, but it's showing no signs of flowering. I'm at a loss for collecting pollen from these flowers, as I can barely see the anthers without a magnifying glass. Harvesting and storing the pollen would be a big challenge, especially with no idea if or when the other plant will flower...

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147/365: Lutea foliage

Last fall, the family and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Texas Renaissance Festival. Whilst there, amongst all the jousting and grogging and wenching, I discovered to my delight an extensive growth of passiflora lutea. Now lutea is a small, unassuming passion flower type with small, subtle yellow flowers that can easily be overlooked. This plant not only had a bunch of the little flowers in bloom, but was heavy with ripe fruit. Decaloba-type fruit are about the size of blueberries and generally inedible, but full of seeds. I collected several and after a few months of refrigeration for stratification of the seeds, I planted them. And I've been rewarded with a bunch of little lutea seedlings sprouting for me.

Lutea, as I mentioned, isn't a flashy passiflora species, but it is a Texas native, and I'm happy to add it to my collection.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macro
Lisa On Location

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146/365: Tenuiloba foliage

Today I'm sharing the foliage of passiflora tenuiloba. This one's native to Texas, with a range starting in the Hill Country and extending west and south to more semi-arid regions. It doesn't have flashy flowers, being a small decaloba-type, but I find the foliage fascinating. It's informal name is "bird-winged passion flower," which is self-explanatory. I don't know of many other passiflora species with as elaborate a leaf form. One problem with this plant is that the stems are so thin that I haven't had any luck rooting cuttings from it, which frustrates me to no end, I assure you.

And here's a second view of some younger leaves. Note they start out with less pronounced lobes like other passis, but extend as the leaf grows and matures.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macro
Lisa On Location

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143/365: Caerulea

And here we have a seed from quite possibly the most wide-spread passion flower in the world, caerulea. The seed's a bit smaller than that of incarnata, and not quite so dramatic in its surface texture. This is a seed from last year, stored in my refrigerator in a packet of moist sand. I suspect if I get some fresh seed this year I'll re-shoot it, as tiny sand grains wedged themselves into little nooks on the seed so that I couldn't brush it clean. Note to self: Fresh seeds photograph better than stored seeds.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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142/365: Incarnata seed II

I photographed the seed of passiflora incarnata earlier, for my film photography class, but I used a mottled gray background for that image and wasn't entirely happy with the contrast. So I've re-shot the species for consistency's sake. I like the contrast in this version much better.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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141/365: Inspiration seed

Inspiration is my next subject in my passiflora seed series, but it's not from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. This one is from my personal stock. Inspiration is a tetraploid hybrid, similar to the common p. Incense hybrid, but slightly larger with deeper violet flowers that reflex more. There are other subtle differences as well, along with one big one--Inspiration is self-fertile, whereas Incense fruits with reluctance. Seeds of Inspiration generally follow the classic, common passiflora seed form, but are significantly larger--half again to twice the size of a regular incarnata seed. It also has more red pigmentation than other seeds I've photographed, which is curious.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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140/365: Herbertiana seed

Herbertiana is my next subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. Like p. aurantia, this is an Australian species, once of the few passiflora native to the "Old World." And like aurantia, herbertiana is among the smallest passiflora seeds I've worked with. It's slightly larger than aurantia, but not by much.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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139/365: Aurantia seed

Aurantia is my next subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. This is an Australian species, once of the few passiflora native to the "Old World." A few years ago I bought some seed on Ebay, but they never germinated. Hopefully, I'll have more success with this one.

One other thing--these macro seed photos aren't to scale with one another. Their size varies widely, but I try to "fill the frame" as much as possible to reveal the maximum amount of detail. Aurantia is the smallest seed I've worked with yet--it's actually smaller than the head of a pin. I know, because I Photoshopped out the silver crescent of the pin head I'd mounted it to. Amazing something so small can grow into such impressive vines.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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138/365: Bogotensis seed

Bogotensis is my next subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. Again, I've never attempted to grow passiflora bogotensis before. It's a decaloba, which I like, and fairly rare, which I also like. However, it is reputed to dislike high temperatures, which means I'll have to keep it indoors throughout the summer lest it suffer the fate of the unfortunate tasconias I've attempted to grow. This might be the oddest seed form I've come across yet.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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137/365: Umbilicata seed

Umbilicata is my next subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. Again, I've never attempted to grow passiflora umbilicata before. This particular species has a more traditional appearance to its seeds, at least in comparison to the commonly cultivated species such as incarnata, eulis etc.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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136/365: Morifolia seed

Here's another subject from the Passiflora Society International seed sale. Passiflora morifolia is another species I've never attempted growing before. I'm exceptionally accomplished at killing passiflora, but I'd much prefer developing my cultivation skills. Compare this seed with the previous image of the serratifolia seed and you can clearly see the dramatic morphological differences present.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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135/365: Serratifolia seed

So, I hang out online with a bunch of other passion flower enthusiasts who are members of the Passiflora Society International. The group recently had a seed sale, and I picked up several packages of seed from a variety of species. Naturally, before I planted them I decided to take some high-magnification macro photos of the seeds. Passiflora are known for their dramatic variation, and guess what? The same can be said for their seeds. This is the seed of passiflora serratifolia, a type I've never grown before. This seed has the most dramatic projectile-point shape I've ever seen, outside of an actual projectile point.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macros with Vivitar 2x telextender
Lisa On Location

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133/365: Rind

sigh. At the rate I'm going, it'll take me two years to post all my 365 photos. Taking images isn't a problem--processing to an acceptable standard, them uploading and blogging about them are proving to demand more time than I have available. But I'm still trying!

As I've said before, I'm a passion flower fan, and love passion fruit of all types. The fruit themselves are almost as alien as the flowers. Here's the inside of the rind from a passiflora edulis fruit--the commercial purple variety. The pulpy arils that envelop the seeds grow from puckered swellings lining the inside of the rind in a trio of vertical strips. There's something otherworldly about this. Can you tell I'm fascinated by this plant?

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macro
Lisa On Location

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128/365: Gossypiifolia

I'm a fan of passion flowers, and have several types growing at home. Several have been blooming, although I haven't had a chance to properly photograph them (at least, not as I would consider proper). Yesterday I saw that my passiflora foetida var. gossypiifolia (a Texas native also known as Corona de Cristo) had bloomed for the first time this year. So this morning I went out, and despite the less than ideal circumstances, grabbed a few quick shots. I like the color of this one, and it makes tasty (if small) fruit as well. The flowers close up by midday, however, so I've got to be an early bird to get any images.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon 100mm 2.8 macro
Lisa On Location

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51/365: Lutea seed

Back in October, we made our annual family pilgrimage to the Texas Renaissance Festival. Near the end of the day, near the Wharfside Music Gazebo on the west end of the grounds, I noticed a vine growing up the side of a tree that looked very familiar. After a bit of memory searching, I realized that the small, lobed leaves had an uncanny resemblance to the affinis passion flower vine I used to have (which sadly died during the drought two years back). But it couldn't be affinis, because that's a species native to the Texas Hill Country, and doesn't grow this far east. Then it struck me--affinis was so named because of its very similar appearance to another, much more widespread, North American passion flower, lutea! I looked a little closer, and discovered many, many tiny blue-black fruit. Score me! I gathered a bunch and then placed them in my refrigerator once I got home for several months of cold stratification. I potted them up yesterday, so hopefully within a month I'll have baby lutea plants to plant out. And they're Texas native, too! (I had only one lutea plant before, one with nifty silver variegated leaves, but I managed to kill that one as well).

I've added lutea to my series of passiflora macro seed shots. Firstly, the lutea seed is about half the size of an incarnata or foetida seed, but that's not much of a surprise, as the passion flowers in subgenus decaloba tend to be smaller plants, with small leaves, flowers and fruit. If anything, I was surprise at how much bigger the seeds were than I expected. The seed roughly followed the traditional passiflora seed shape, but unlike other passion flower seeds I've photographed, the lutea seed does not show a dimpled, golf ball-like surface pattern, but rather a grooved one. Curious. I wonder if this is a common trait among decalobas? If I could only get my tenuiloba to fruit...

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50/365: Foetida var. gossypiifolia seed

So, I'm returning to my macro passiflora seed project. I'm a big fan of passion flowers, and have killed far more than my share of plants in my time. The seeds are small, but fascinating. I expect I'll continue to add to this collection as I get my hands on more species. For now, here's a seed from passiflora foetida var. gossypiifolia, a native Texas passion flower also known as the "Cotton leaf" passion flower or "Corona de Cristo." I've seen some of the vines sprouting in the back yard, so hopefully I'll have some good shots of their complex bracts and flowers to share within a month or so. For now, we've got the seed, which is more angular and coarse than many other passiflora types. If dragons were real, I'd expect a dragon scale to look like this.

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49/365: Mexican fritillary

I'm struggling to find macro inspiration for my film photography class, so I decided to try my hand at insects yesterday before the sun went down. Great in theory, disastrous in practice. Some interesting wasps and flies seemed promising at first, but I couldn't even get a good shot of them with the 7D, much less the much-slower-process involved with the film-only Elan 7ne. So I ratcheted back my expectations and looked through some of the Incense passion vines that survived our weak excuse for winter and found this Mexican fritillary caterpillar munching on some leaves. Mexican and Gulf fritillary caterpillars look almost identical, but the Mexicans have a white stripe running lengthwise down their bodies amidst the orange and black, whereas Gulf fritillaries are strictly orange and black. What made this guy stand out is that he's getting ready to molt, and you can see his skin has turned grey where it's detached from the body underneath and nearly ready to shed.

Here's a second, bonus shot I took, simply to give a better view of the fleeting grey coloration. By the time you read this, I'm sure it's already shed its skin is once again sporting its regular orange-black-white color scheme.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon EF 100mm 2.8 macro with Vivitar 2x telextender

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365 / 40: Sting

So, remember how I mentioned in yesterday's photo that I'm a huge fan of passion flowers/passion vines/passion fruit? Well, one aspect of growing passiflora is the fact that several species of butterfly lay their eggs on it, and their larvae eat the passion vines as their only food source. Passiflora generate a natural form of cyanide in their foliage as a protection against being eaten, but these caterpillars have evolved to absorb that poison and use it as a defense mechanism to prevent them from being eaten. They've got little black spines all over their orange bodies to drive the point home. Normally, they're harmless. Just brushing or touching one isn't harmful (unlike bushing an asp/puss caterpillar, which is excruciating). However, if you happen to bump into a fritillary caterpillar with any force, and those spines are actually jammed into the skin, well, the effect is not pleasant. This is my leg today, after an encounter with a caterpillar two days ago. You can still make out the puncture marks where the individual spines impaled me. So let me serve as a lesson to you: Don't try this at home!

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon EF 100mm 2.8 macro

Lisa On Location Photography

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That time of the year

After surviving the coldest, wettest Texas winter in recent memory, we've had several days of beautiful sunny weather. The plum trees in the back yard are blossoming, bees are buzzing around them, and I see crimson buds popping out on the pomegranate bushes. All this points to one inescapable fact.

I'm about to become wholly obsessed with passion flowers again.



It's an annual event with me. I'll sell seeds and rooted plants on Ebay, using the money generated that way to buy more seeds and rooted plants of different types. And I'll trade a lot of the same with other passiflora enthusiasts. Especially this year, since the drought and heat wave in 2009 wiped out a huge portion of my collection--including some relatively rare favorites. Yesterday I cleaned out some of the old pots to recycle the soil, and was surprised to find still-living roots in one. I've no idea what plant this was from, but have potted up the roots in a started pot and will see if this mystery plant rejoins us for 2010.

I also pulled out some dried fruit I'd stored and opened them up for the seeds. I had a single fruit from an edulis plant--that's the commercial fruit variety--I'd cross pollinated with my Texas native incarnata, and I planted the 60 or so seeds it contained to see if any hybrids would be of interest. I also cut open several fruit I'd collected from the tetraploid hybrid "Inspiration." The fruits were heavy and firm, and to my surprise, when I cut them open I found them full of juicy pulp. This is surprising, since they were picked in October, and all the other passion fruit I collected usually dry out within a month or two. Obviously, this one has a much stronger moisture barrier. If commercial breeders could impart this into farmed varieties, the market (and longevity) of passion fruit would increase exponentially (currently, the fruit is considered fragile and doesn't travel or store well, which contributes to its high cost). There were many large, dark seeds within, so I'm cleaning them all up for another mass planting. I don't know of any viable hybrids that've come from an Inspiration cross, so I expect many of the seeds to be sterile, but you never know. I may get lucky and sprout the next big thing in passiflora hybrids.

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