Please can you post some photos of your plant with Fruit
Thanks
NC

I'll take some shots tonight when I get home.

Thank you
NC

Mine is also setting fruit this year with incarnata pollen. The first year, it set one fruit late, and none from my hand pollinations. Last year, it also did not set with hand-pollination with incarnata pollen, but set 21 fruit from bee pollination, presumably from incarnata pollen from the surrounding area. This year, it is setting fruit with the same incarnata pollen that failed last year, with 8 so far. I guess the maturity of the vine does make a big difference in fruit set.

That's great maybe you will get something totally different. It's always fun to plant the only seed in a pod.

Indigo Dream is pretty I like the thick dark fringe in the center. Passie flowers with heavy fringe like that always reminds me of long eyelashes! More specifically (lol this is dumb) but of the eyelashes of snufalugafus ~you know, that mammoth from Sesame Street! He had eyelashes like that! LOL, I got problems :) ....
~SJN

Here it is. Not much to look at--about two inches long, irregular in shape with a splotchy complexion. They usually shrink to about an inch and a half about the time they drop. Almost always hollow. Hopefully, this one will have some seeds for me in a few weeks.

Thanks jblaschke

I've gotten fruit on my incense before, and at the time, it was the ONLY passiflora around. I was also on a balcony in downtown, so I don't know how it happened! :)

Every other one would be empty, the others, full of seeds....

I've seen incarnata growing in ditches in and around Houston, so I wouldn't be so quick to claim total isolation. Plus, many people grow caerulea as a potted plant. You could easily have been pollinated by a wasp, fly or bee carrying in pollen from another balcony plant half a dozen floors away.

But I know what you mean. Last fall my incense set four fruit after all my incarnata and Caerulea had long since stopped flowering. And I'd looked for native populations of incarnata and found none in the pastures around our subdivision. I've found one neighbor two blocks away with Incense as well, but that's it. Quite a puzzling mystery!

SJN Indigo Dream does look like Snufalugafus's eyelashes. Is it embarrassing that I even know who that is. lol I usually don't care for white flowers but that one is a beauty. Jblaschke good luck with the seed and the rest of the fruit. It will be interesting to see what it ends up like.
Karyn

jblaschke, wasn't Incense created for producing Fruit for Eating but wasn't that good at doing it, but as it's Flowers were so good it was kept for that reason, or have I got the Wrong end of the stick?

Ninecrow, yes, I believe it was a USDA program in Florida that crossed a lot of passiflora in an attempt to develop a cold-hardy commercial fruit producer. Incense turned out to not only be reluctant to fruit, but set fruit is normally hollow. Still, the flowers were so pretty that they released it to nurseries in 1974 (I think).

Too bad they didn't realize those clones were infected with that latent virus at the time, when they could've recreated the cross and produced a clean version of the plant. New Incense, Inspiration and Temptation (the last two being tetraploids) show that this cross produces consistent hybrids.

Thanks for the Info jblaschke

That's interesting, Jayme! I've been seeing 'Incense' for years, but had not idea how it came about. Mine hasn't made a fruit, but then I've only had it for a few months - it possibly could make one, since 'Lady Margaret' grows right next to it, and I've recently planted a p. incarnata down the fence from it.
I've ordered two passiflora books from Amazon.com - maybe I can learn how to hand pollinate from one of them. I can see the obvious pollen, but where do you rub the pollen? On those hanging over things that look roughly like big fallopian tubes? I can't see a hole in them, so I don't know how the pollen could be taken in. Well, hopefully the books will 'splain! :)
Sherry

Hi misssherry,
Here is a link that shows parts of the flower. You put the pollen on the stigma with a fine paintbrush, qtip or just rub it on directly from the anthers. There is also a link to show how to save pollen. It can last up to a year in the freezer. I currently save lots of brugmansia pollen. I used to save a lot of passiflora pollen. I am going to start saving passiflora pollen again this year. That is one thing I think that you can trade to other countries without a lot of regulation (pollen).

Here is a link that might be useful: hybridizing

Misssherry, those two passiflora books are very good references. I've got both, and while neither one is perfect, they do a great job of bringing newcomers to the passion up to speed quickly.

Incense has sterile pollen, and is useless as a pollenator. Such a shame, because it produces pollen in abundance. Lady Margaret doesn't produce any pollen at all, so you're out of luck there. On the bright side, incarnata will pollenate both the Incense and Lady Margaret, so once the vines mature, you could potentially get some (mostly hollow) fruit out of them.

Shame that Incense turned out such a Crap Fruit Producer....

Would be nice if someone could breed either a bit more Flavor into Caerulea/Constance Elliot or breed a new cold hardy one so that pepole in cooler countries could grow for Fruit....

My caerulea fruit are uniformly smallish and utterly tasteless. Seriously. The "insipid" flavor Vanderplank mentions would be an improvement. Simply nothing there.

My Constance Eliott on the other hand has a slightly sweet taste, and a very faint blackberry-like tinge to it. I can almost see why some places say they're a good substitute for blackberries in a pie. But you'd need a lot of fruit, and my CE just isn't that productive. My regular caerulea tho, the fruit are worthless.

Thanks y'all for the info on pollinating passionflowers!
My p. caerulea has only made a few fruits, and they were all empty - my p. incarnatas, on the other hand, make them by the truck load! I don't know have the patience to try to separate all those seeds out, so I usually leave them for the critters, in case they like them - that might explain why maypop keeps coming up in odd places! :)
MissSherry

MissSherry, you can actually eat the seeds in most edible passiflora, like pomegranates. Or you can eat the arils, and spit the seeds out like sunflower hulls. Of course, your local critters might not like that option!

A quick update for everyone who's interested (with pictures!). I was poking around in the bushes out front today and discovered one of the fruit from my Incense had dropped. It must've fallen several days ago, because it had turned yellower than I'd seen--but it's been raining so much that it hadn't dessicated. Since the other remaining fruit on the vine had set at about the same time, I went ahead and picked it as well.

There was only one problem--the larger yellow fruit had fallen and lost its ID tag. So now I'm not certain what it was pollenated by. It could be any of my incarnata, caerulea or Constance Eliott. The smaller green one still had its tag--my "Texas Giant" incarnata.

As you can see in the photo above, these fruit were any thing but hollow. I haven't counted them yet, but I'd say there are at least half a dozen mature seeds in each.

Have you ever planted seeds from your Texas Giant, Jayme? I'm wondering if its offspring make the extra big flowers.
MissSherry

Misssherry, I've sold a bunch of the seed on eBay and given away even more, as well as scattered seed in various locales around my work and relatives' places, but never actually planted said seed in a controlled environment where I could watch their growth and observe the flowers. Honestly, I'm not sure if any of my wild sown seed has even germinated.

I doubt that the offspring plants would have flowers that size, though. Almost all of the seed is the result of crossing with the Georgia, which has smaller, almost textbook flowers. So I imagine the offspring plant would split the difference, more or less (I know genetics aren't so cut and dried) between the two, although some plants would likely favor one parent or the other more. Now, seed from the original wild population, where all the plants have flowers this size, those would come true with the large flowers. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get back to my folks' property late in the season to harvest ripe fruit.

My 'Incense' has been blooming prolifically for weeks with no fruits, but I noticed this evening that there are two fruits coming out of some spent flowers. About ?4 weeks ago, I transplanted a puny little p. incarnata from the totally shady spot where it had been trying to grow to a spot right down the fence from where the 'Incense' and 'Lady Margarets' are. I added a good bit of chicken manure in with the planting mix, and that, plus all the sun it's now getting caused it to grow prolifically. It's been blooming for about 7-10 days, and the bees and other insects travel back and forth, I've watched them. It'll be interesting to see if these fruits continue to grow and make mature seeds, make hollow fruits, or just abort. By the way, the p. incarnata that I transplanted came from some seed that I took from local, roadside maypops. The leaves on this p. incarnata are a little thicker and more serrated than those I've got planted in my garden that I ordered from a nursery in Tennessee - the flowers look and smell just the same.
I've been enjoying my two new books - the beautiful pictures are eye candy! :)
Sherry

I've been bud pollinating and hand pollinating open flowers on my Incense vine for several weeks. At first I used incarnata pollen, but in the last 2 weeks its been only caerulea pollen. This morning I was checking the vine before work, and was surprised to find 9 young fruits, all not more than 2 weeks old. I hope these are the result of my hand pollinations, but I also wonder if it might be possible for Incense to self-pollinate, and then have seeds fail to develop. To add to the mystery, I did not tag any of the flowers I pollinated, since I was only using caerulea pollen. I'm going to continue to hand pollinate more flowers in the upcoming weeks, but will make sure to tag and bag them, so I know with certainty what the pollen donor is. It would be nice if I end up with my own home-made version of Indigo Dreams.

Mark