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Passiflora caerulea

Passiflora caerulea: Flowers
Photo by Ken Fern. High resolution version

Passiflora caerulea: Plant
Photo by Ken Fern. High resolution version

Passiflora caerulea: Fruit
Photo by Ken Fern. High resolution version

Passiflora caerulea: Fruit
Photo by Ken Fern. High resolution version

Common name:	Passion Flower	Family:	Passifloraceae
Author:	L.	Botanical references:	11, 200
Synonyms:
Known Hazards:	None known
Range:	Central and Western S. America - Brazil.
Habitat:	Not known
Edibility Rating (1-5):	3	Medicinal Rating (1-5):	0

Other Common Names:	From various places around the Web, may not be correct. See below.
	Blue Passion Flower [H], Blue-crown Passion-flower [B], Bluecrown Passionflower [P],
Epithets:	From a Dictionary of Botanical Epithets
	caerulea = blue; flora = flowered;
Systematics:	From a USDA Plants Database
	Order: Violales. Passion-flower family
Other Range Info:	From the Ethnobotany Database
	Brazil

Physical Characteristics

An evergreen climber growing to 10m by 10m at a fast rate. It is hardy to zone 7 and is frost tender. It is in leaf all year, in flower from June to September, and the seeds ripen from September to November. The scented flowers are hermaphrodite (have both male and female organs) and are pollinated by Bees. We rate it 3/5 for edibility and 0/5 for medicinal use.

The plant prefers light (sandy), medium (loamy) and heavy (clay) soils and requires well-drained soil. The plant prefers acid, neutral and basic (alkaline) soils. It cannot grow in the shade. It requires moist soil.

Habitats and Possible Locations

Woodland, Sunny Edge, Dappled Shade, By Walls, By South Wall, By West Wall.

Edible Uses

Flowers; Fruit.

Fruit - raw or cooked[2, 4, 105]. The unripe fruits are cooked[177], whilst the ripe fruits are eaten raw or made into a refreshing drink[183]. The flavour is not very desirable[3]. The fruit is about 6cm long and 4cm wide, it is partly hollow and contains a small amount of pleasant acid-tasting pulp surrounding a large quantity of seeds[K].
The flowers can be made into a syrup.

Medicinal Uses

Disclaimer

None known

Other Uses

Rootstock.

This plant can be used as a rootstock for some of the less hardy members of this genus, conferring on them an additional cold tolerance. Be careful that root suckers do not take over from the grafted plant[200].

Cultivation details

Requires a well-drained soil with plenty of moisture in the growing season, otherwise it is not fussy[1, 200]. Dislikes highly alkaline soils[202].
Hardy to about -15°c, if plants are cut down to the ground by frost they can regenerate from the base[200].
Very fast growing[11]. Roots of outdoor grown plants should be restricted to encourage fruiting[1]. Plants produce tendrils and climb by attaching these to other plants.
The plant has a very long flowering period, from early summer to early autumn, though individual flowers only live for about 48 hours[245]. The flowers are open all night and start to close in the morning[260]. The flowers are delicately scented[245]. The cultivar 'Constance Elliot' is more fragrant[245].
If fruit is required, especially when the plant is grown indoors, it is best to hand pollinate using pollen from a flower that has been open for 12 hours to pollinate a newly opened flower before midday[88, 200]. The flowers open in sunny weather and do not open on dull cloudy days[219]. Fruit is only formed after long hot summers in Britain[166].
Plants are very tolerant of pruning and can be cut back to ground level if required to rejuvenate the plant[202]. Any pruning is best carried out in the spring[219].
Plants in this genus are notably resistant to honey fungus[200].

Propagation

Pre-soak the seed for 12 hours in warm water and then sow late winter or early spring in a warm greenhouse. If sown in January and grown on fast it can flower and fruit in its first year[88]. The seed germinates in 1 - 12 months at 20°c. Prick out the seedlings into individual pots when they are large enough to handle. It you are intending to grow the plants outdoors, it is probably best to keep them in the greenhouse for their first winter and plant them out into their permanent positions in late spring or early summer, after the last expected frosts. Mulch the roots well in late autumn to protect them from the cold.
Cuttings of young shoots, 15cm with a heel, in spring[1].
Leaf bud cuttings in spring.
Cuttings of fully mature wood in early summer. Takes 3 months. High percentage[3].

Scent

Flowers: Fresh: The flowers are delicately scented[245]. The cultivar 'Constance Elliot' is more fragrant[245].

Cultivars

'Constance Elliot'

Suppliers

For more details of plant suppliers please see our Suppliers Page which lists many more places to look.

Web References

Details of Medicinal Uses, Habitats, etc. in M. Grieve A Modern Herbal (1931) [4]
[H] Details of Scandanavian and European Common names in Henriette's names database
[E] Ethnobotany Data (common names, uses, countries) from the Ethnobotany Database.
[V] Images from the Vascular Plant Image Gallery of the Texas A&M Bioinformatics Working Group.
[B] Data (Latin & Common names, other references) from the BONAP's Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.
[G] Data (Common Names, Uses, Distribution) from the USDA/ARS NPGS's GRIN taxonomic database.
[P] Data. (uses, distribution, wetland) from the USDA'a Plants database.
[HP] Links, Photos, Suppliers from Hortiplex Plant Database

References for the family Passifloraceae.

To be included in the Flora of China.

See the PFAF Links Pages for other sources.

Also try Photos and info from the The Plants Database which has 14,000 images.

References

[K] Ken Fern
Notes from observations, tasting etc at Plants For A Future and on field trips.

[1] F. Chittendon. RHS Dictionary of Plants plus Supplement. 1956 Oxford University Press 1951
Comprehensive listing of species and how to grow them. Somewhat outdated, it has been replaces in 1992 by a new dictionary (see [200]).

[2] Hedrick. U. P. Sturtevant's Edible Plants of the World. Dover Publications 1972 ISBN 0-486-20459-6
Lots of entries, quite a lot of information in most entries and references.

[3] Simmons. A. E. Growing Unusual Fruit. David and Charles 1972 ISBN 0-7153-5531-7
A very readable book with information on about 100 species that can be grown in Britain (some in greenhouses) and details on how to grow and use them.

[4] Grieve. A Modern Herbal. Penguin 1984 ISBN 0-14-046-440-9
Not so modern (1930's?) but lots of information, mainly temperate plants.

[11] Bean. W. Trees and Shrubs Hardy in Great Britain. Vol 1 - 4 and Supplement. Murray 1981
A classic with a wealth of information on the plants, but poor on pictures.

[88] RHS. The Garden. Volume 112. Royal Horticultural Society 1987
Snippets of information from the magazine of the RHS. In particular, there are articles on plants that are resistant to honey fungus, oriental vegetables, Cimicifuga spp, Passiflora species and Cucurbits.

[105] Tanaka. T. Tanaka's Cyclopaedia of Edible Plants of the World. Keigaku Publishing 1976
The most comprehensive guide to edible plants I've come across. Only the briefest entry for each species, though, and some of the entries are more than a little dubious. Not for the casual reader.

[166] Taylor. J. The Milder Garden. Dent 1990
A good book on plants that you didn't know could be grown outdoors in Britain.

[177] Kunkel. G. Plants for Human Consumption. Koeltz Scientific Books 1984 ISBN 3874292169
An excellent book for the dedicated. A comprehensive listing of latin names with a brief list of edible parts.

[183] Facciola. S. Cornucopia - A Source Book of Edible Plants. Kampong Publications 1990 ISBN 0-9628087-0-9
Excellent. Contains a very wide range of conventional and unconventional food plants (including tropical) and where they can be obtained (mainly N. American nurseries but also research institutes and a lot of other nurseries from around the world.

[200] Huxley. A. The New RHS Dictionary of Gardening. 1992. MacMillan Press 1992 ISBN 0-333-47494-5
Excellent and very comprehensive, though it contains a number of silly mistakes. Readable yet also very detailed.

[202] Davis. B. Climbers and Wall Shrubs. Viking. 1990 ISBN 0-670-82929-3
Contains information on 2,000 species and cultivars, giving details of cultivation requirements. The text is terse but informative.

[219] Grey-Wilson. C. & Matthews. V. Gardening on Walls Collins 1983 ISBN 0-00-219220-0
A nice little book about plants for growing against walls and a small section on plants that can grow in walls.

[245] Genders. R. Scented Flora of the World. Robert Hale. London. 1994 ISBN 0-7090-5440-8
An excellent, comprehensive book on scented plants giving a few other plant uses and brief cultivation details. There are no illustrations.

[260] Phillips. R. & Rix. M. Conservatory and Indoor Plants Volumes 1 & 2 Pan Books, London. 1998 ISBN 0-330-37376-5
Excellent photos of over 1,100 species and cultivars with habits and cultivation details plus a few plant uses. Many species are too tender for outdoors in Britain though there are many that can be grown outside.

Readers Comments

Passiflora caerulea

david (davidni@xtra.co.nz) Tue Jan 9 05:16:10 2001

Apparently P. coerulea (with an o not an a, I expect it is the same plant) has been used for nervous and menstral complaints in much the same way as P.incarnata in Paraguay. I've no idea of safety or effectiveness. I've been drinking a relaxing tea of herbs including P.incarnata, is very nice, I expect it is the very nice ingredient. Seems to provide a similar degree of ease, relaxation as beer or (I imagine) dope without the often undesirable(& illegal) intoxication. It also appears to be quite compatable with physical work to me, even helpful.

Have never seen a P.incarnara plant, think it may not be in this country (New Zealand). p.caerulea is available here, haven't tried itm dont know if I will.

ref: p213(footnote.) Maori healing and Herbal . Murdoch Riley. Viking Sevenseas Ltd.1997

Passiflora caerulea

David Nicholls (davidni@xta.co.nz) Thu Jan 11 02:36:46 2001

Since writing this I've read in the widely available book "Tyler's Honest Herbal" that P. caerulea has harmful substances in it(& identifies them) and says that confusion between this and p. incarnata has given P. incarnata an undeserved bad name. (I won't go into details in respect to copywrite and his hard work).

So the above info on Paraguay uses is not for the home experimenter, I certainly won't be trying it . Perhaps there would be potential for chemists to seperate toxins from useful costituents, if there are any.

Learning more about what they do with it in Paraguay would still be of interest to me.

Passiflora species

Rich (michael@thewitchshaven.com) Wed Oct 10 12:38:19 2001

1. Passiflora, the host plants of Heliconius butterflies contains:

a. toxic alkaloids (strychnine, caffeine, nicotine, cocaine, and morphine are all alkaloids which we extract from plants for pharmaceutical, recreational and agricultural uses. Nicotine sulfate is a potent pesticide) and

b. cyanogenic glycosides (These compounds are essentially sugars attached to a CN or cyanide group . As glycosides, these compounds are non-toxic and contained in an intracellular compartment. A specific glycosidase enzyme resides in a separate compartment. When a herbivore munches on green tissues of a passion vine, the enzyme is brought into contact with the glycoside and cyanide is released.

Information from

Link: Texas University Lecture Notes

Cross references: Plants: Passiflora species. Genera: Passiflora.

Passiflora species

Rich (michael@thewitchshaven.com) Wed Oct 10 12:48:05 2001

The above comment seems to refer to the leaves and not the flowers. Anyone know more on this subject?

Cheers to Linda King (tlady@clara.co.uk) for this info

Another link is

Link: University of Texas newsletter

Cross references: Plants: Passiflora species. Genera: Passiflora.

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Bibliography

Plant information taken from the Plants For A Future - Species Database. Copyright (c) 1997-2003.
WEB search engine by Rich Morris - Home Page- Contact Info
Blagdon Cross, Ashwater, Beaworthy, Devon, EX21 5DF, UK.
Website: www.pfaf.org Phone: 0845 458 4719/_44(0) 1208 872963

This page (UK) http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/cgi-bin/pfaf/arr_html?Passiflora+caerulea
This page (US) http://www.ibiblio.org/pfaf/cgi-bin/arr_html?Passiflora+caerulea

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We make no claims of magical effects or supernatural powers for any item in this catalog. In spite of legendary attributes or occult and craft tradition, such items are offered as curios only and beliefs concerning their magical effectiveness are related only for historical interest.