Giant Passionfruit

Passionfruit flowers are exquisite. Their outermost ring are alternating petals and sepals (they’re the slightly greener ones that enclose the unopened bloom). Next is a frilly ring of filaments called a corona and in the centre are five stamens and three carpels (which I think look like little alien heads).

There are lots of different kinds of passionfruit, the more common ones that you are likely to find in shops (Passiflora edulis) have a white flower, but there are also banana passionfruit (Passiflora mollissima), with a more simple pinky-mauve flower; red passionfruit (Passiflora coccinea) with, you guessed it, red flowers; and giant granadilla (Passiflora quadrangularis) with huge purple blooms. The ‘quadrangularis’ comes from the square shape of the stem (remember quadrangles in maths?).

I brought a giant granadilla plant back with me from Cairns two years ago and so far I’ve had lots of flowers but no fruit yet. We have lots of bees which by rights should be doing the pollinating and I’m usually too lazy to every hand pollinate anything but I think I’ll give it a go this year because I’m really keen to try the fruit. Giant granadillas are the largest fruit in the Passiflora genus and are kind of football shaped up to about 12 inches long! The vine is really vigorous and is currently taking over the back fence and neighbours hedge, but when winter comes I’ll give it a heavy prune and it will start afresh next summer. Even if I never get fruit, the flowers on it are so beautiful it more than deserves a place in the garden!

Marigolds

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