We get asked a lot of questions about passion fruit. What variety to grow for fruit? Does this hybrid fruit? Can I grow fruit in my climate? Will these two plants pollinate each other to produce fruit? Can I make my own hybrids? And the list goes on. So today, we thought we would take a few minutes to clear up some of the confusion about passion fruit.
Firstly, the most commonly grown variety is for fruit is Passiflora edulis. This variety fruits readily, and produces large juice filled fruits. Out of all the varieties we grow, it has the best tasting fruit. If you wish to try to grow your own passion fruit, a cultivar of this variety is what we would recommend. Other passion flower species can grow edible fruit. However, many of them are more persnickety about pollination and growing conditions making them even harder to get fruit from than P. edulis.
Now, while we do not want to disappoint any one, we also want to be realistic with you. For the majority of gardeners in most of the United States, growing any quantity of passion fruit is unlikely. P. edulis is a tropical plant that requires a long season and thrives in high temperatures. In most places there is not enough time or heat to ripen fruit before frost. Therefore, to harvest mature fruit, you will need grow the plant in a container on a self-contained trellis, and you will need to move the plant indoors to ripen the fruit.
If you live in a more northern climate but really, really want to try growing passion fruit, try P. incarnata
The maypop, Passiflora incarnata, is a cold hardy passion flower native to the eastern United States. It flowers readily and sets copious amounts of small green fruit. These fruits are edible and can be reasonably tasty, though they are not as tasty, and are much less juicy than P. edulis. Many people use them for making things like jellies, syrups, juice, etc. Keep in mind that you will need a lot of them to make any volume of juice. The main pro of choosing P. incarnata is that it is much less likely to disappoint you than P. edulis.
Some of the P. incarnata hybrids also produce fruit though they often do not have as much juice as P. incarnata. A couple examples are P. ‘Fata Confetto’ and P. ‘Blue Eyed Susan’. Both of these varieties are very attractive to pollinators and set fruit fairly readily.
Not all passion fruit is equal!
There are far more plants in our collection that are not suitable for fruiting, than are suitable. Many of the really gorgeous passion flowers created and selected to have striking flowers were not bred to produce good fruit. Many passion flowers don’t produce any fruit at all.
Passiflora caerulea is a good example of a passion flower that grows unpleasant fruit. P. caerulea is very frequently used in making hybrids because it has large ornamental flowers, and it is an excellent pollen producer which hybridizes readily with many other species. While this species and many of its selections and hybrids will produce a lot of fruit that is technically edible, they are not tasty.
Additionally, a lot of hybrids will not produce any fruit at all. Unless a hybrid is listed as producing fruit, it is safe to assume that they won’t be worth growing for fruit. Many of the inter-species hybrids are sterile. Because they are sterile, they will not set fruit. If they do set fruit, the fruit will be empty meaning it will not contain any edible portions. P. ‘Lady Margaret’ is a good example of this. Lady Margaret gets a fruit setting habit from its parent P. incarnata, however, the fruits are almost always empty.
Many of the other hybrids we grow have never set fruit for us. This is obviously not ideal if you want to harvest fruit. However, this can be a very desirable characteristic if you are looking for a plant to grow ornamentally. You will have the beautiful abundance of flowers and landscaping greenery but will not have the mess of fallen fruit to clean up.
Another variable that plays a key role in getting fruit is pollination
Outside of climate inadequacies, pollination is probably the biggest hurdle you will face when trying to get fruit from passion flowers. To get fruit on passion flowers, not only do you need a variety capable of setting fruit in your climate, but you also need good pollination to get quality fruit. Most passion flowers are not self-pollinating which means to get fruit, you will need a second vine that is a suitable pollination partner.
Not all passion flowers can pollinate each other.
Before you waste a lot of time trying to use incompatible plants for pollination, it is worthwhile to do an internet search to see if there are already hybrids out there with those parents. If there are not, they might not be compatible (though we are still learning so it doesn’t hurt to try). You can also look at the bottom the description for each of our passion flowers. There it will tell you the parentage of each variety. There is a good chance that if a particular variety is listed as a parent, (and the hybrid isn’t sterile) that it may work for pollination.
Some species hybridize readily, and that is reflected by all of the hybrids available with parentage including these species. Other species seem to accept pollen from very few other species. These plants can often times be difficult to get fruit on without an unrelated vine of the same species.
If you are interested in a challenge, P. nigradenia and P. Purple Tiger are good examples. Both of these varieties are capable of setting large edible fruit. However, despite us having over 40 passion flower varieties, they rarely (Purple Tiger) or never (nigradenia) set fruit for us here on our farm. This means that likely we don’t have suitable pollination partners, or a similar flowering time of suitable pollinators with sufficient blossom overlap (we do no hand pollinating) or they are not attractive enough to bees to get pollinated.
When dealing with passion flower pollination, you may run into lack of flowering overlap or pollinators.
To get natural pollination, you of course need a flower on each plant to be open at the same time, and you also need a bee to visit both flowers to spread pollen. Many times flowering does not overlap, and to get successful pollination, you will need to save pollen from one flower to use in hand pollination the second vine when it flowers.
Additionally, we have noticed that bees do not treat all passion flowers equally. They definitely have preferences, so if something more desirable is blooming at they same time, they may ignore some of your other passion flower blossoms. If you are curious about what passion flowers we have found to be pollinator favorites, we will be highlighting some of their favorites in a future post.
If you are interested in experimenting to create your own hybrids
Start with some easy to hybridize varieties to get the hang of hand pollination. Once you have mastered the art of hand pollination and can reliably get fruit from your compatible crosses you can move on to attempting more tricky hybrids.
Generally speaking species like caerulea and incarnata are good to have around as pollinators as they tend to be able to pollinate a lot of different species. If you are interested in creating your own passion flower hybrids, they are both really good pollen donors for beginners.
As a rule, passion flower species hybridize readily. However, keep in mind not all species can pollinate all other species. We are still learning about what can pollinate what. Therefore, it doesn’t hurt try crossing various plants even if you don’t expect to succeed. Who knows, maybe you will create the next amazing passion flower hybrid!
We hope this has provided you with some food for thought as you are considering which passion flower varieties to grow.
If you are interested in learning which passion flowers we have found pollinators to prefer, don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter to get it delivered to your inbox!
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