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Saturday, August 30, 2008

In Bloom: Passiflora capsularis and sanguineolenta

Passiflora capsularisPassiflora capsularis is a wonderful species. As you can see it has lovely white flowers, approximately 2 inches across with a strong scent of warm vanilla. It is wholly easy to grow, even flowering in comparatively small pots (4") in partial shade, so would be an excellent prospect for a hanging basket. I find they're slow to start from seed though, at least with the one batch I tried. I tried to start them in early spring with a heating mat from seed that came from my plant last summer. They absolutely refused to come up until mid-summer, by which time the pot had been moved outside. I'm lucky I hadn't dumped the pot in the compost heap.

Passiflora sanguineolentaPassiflora sanguineolenta is closely related to capsularis, and indeed their leaves and flowers are very similar in size and shape. Obviously the flower color is different and sanguineolenta has very little scent (at least this is true of my plant). In my more limited experience with this plant I'd find it is also similarly easy to grow, but I have not as yet tried to grow it from seed. I'd like to self pollinate my plant, but I seem unable to catch it at the right time of day to find it with ripened pollen still on the plant. The flowers change so quickly!

2 comments:

swamprad said...

I do enjoy seeing your passifloras. Last week in the Swamp, I found a thicket of passifloras, dozens of blooms, so beautiful!

Anonymous said...

These are gorgeous species of passionflowers, now I want to try capsularis myself! Sanguineolenta is also beautiful, but I have a small garden and plants with scent get first prize.

I'm impressed you started these from seed! It's been my experience that heat-loving perennials don't come up until much later than you expect. (Like, after you have said, damn, I lost them.) Yeah, keep those pots...