Hi Birdinthepalm,

Is that bird in the palm tree, or bird in the palm of your hand? Cute handle, either way. I hope someone more expert than I will respond to your question, but I'll give you my 2 cents worth. I, too, have read about the difficulties with self incompatibility, failure to flower and fruit. This fall, with some trepidation, and having never before grown Passiflora, I ordered a Passiflora incarnata from www.gardenvines.com, and emailed them with pretty much your same questions. The person there, (Dan, I think it was), assured me that the P. incarnata they offer is self-fertile, and that if the plant likes its growing conditions, should produce flowers and fruit without a second plant as pollinator. Although he would certainly be biased in favor of his stock, I take him at his word. However, from what I've read on this forum, at least some incarnata are not self fertile, and would need an unrelated pollinator to produce fruit.

I'm choosing to keep my fingers crossed and will assume that the strain I bought is self-fertile, although perhaps other species or individuals are not. These differences in species, and strains within a species might account for the differing reports. Growing a plant from a cutting would offer more certainty about its characteristics, as opposed to growing it from a seed. That's probably why you had more success with your cutting grown plants. Still, I can't see why a seed grown plant couldn't be as self-fertile as one from a cutting, it would just be dicier because you would be somewhat less certain about its parentage.

I can say nothing about other species of Passiflora, and hope that someone with more knowledge and first hand experience will give you a better response than I.

When I ordered the seeds for P. molissima the directions said germination could be in as little as seven days or might take up to a year. I have to say, I'd have lost the seeds in their starting tray after a year and would have forgotten where I'd even put them, Luckily I had three come up in little over a week, but then no flowers for years, though I must say they grew so differently that my red one, and were constantly forming underground runners and sending up multitudes of new plants all over the pots.
The red "vitifolia" has never produced underground runners however, though I thought with the other "how neat" and an easy way to get new plants constantly just by separating out the new shoots, but alas none of those bloomed either. Oh well, I guess there is wide variation in their cold hardiness and habits etc. so it's best to study up on any new species to see what their "quirks" are! The "molissima" is a banana passonfruit type with very oddly shaped fruits, though of course that requires that they flower first. I"m glad the cuttings work most of the time because my "vitifolia" can be awful touchy about things!!