Cut and paste is your friend!

I plant P. incarnata last year, it looked like it died til I spotted it about 2 feet from where I planted it, it's poppin up everywhere, I just yank out the ones in bad spots and stick em in other plants potted in just plain pottin mix, I usually snip the vines into 8-10" long pieces, I dont cover em but they stay in my greenhouse usually, I'd say 60-75% of em root, it's very humid in there, but the temps swing Wiley in this weather! 110 or higher on a bright hot day, and night time lows will match outside which has been 55-60 here lately...
I don't think the mind that, so I bet humidity is the key... Good luck with that where ur at...

I just give em away, I don't think I'm going to have any shortage of em...
I sure wish more of them were hardy... But I might try pushin their zone hardiness and see what I get

I'd try serpentine layering. That is a great method for vines. The EZ Clone and other aero propagators are good too!

Good idea, Cliff - I didn't think of layering.... wonder if just ground layering would do it. Duh...

Yeah, Swayback - from my experience of Maypops in my fields back in TN, they do show up kind of later than you would expect in the season. Funny, I head that they hated to be transplanted (the only reason I didn't bring one with me). Your transplants do well?

I got 3 last year... I planted 2 and gave one away, mines didn't do anything last year, barely grew a foot, his did, not sure why, his still beats mine this year too but they are both growing like gangbusters!
I've git em popping up everywhere, looks good fodder for eBay!
Not really the best transplanter, but after that first season it's already invasive...
I have fruit! I'm tickled!


Anyone know how long it takes to ripen?

Not sure, probably depends on how much sun they're getting and how much heat. But I do think it's kind of a seasonal thing - once per summer.

I thought I would find the answer to that question this summer. Planted a cutting of this from my Mom's vine last year and it's gone nuts. I was worried no caterpillars were going to show up to eat it (which is why I planted it anyway, for gulf fritillary caterpillars,) and it was getting out of control! But they have, in droves! I finally noticed a lot of chewed leaves yesterday. I even saw a butterfly laying its' eggs on the vine yesterday. So cool! Now I'm back to hoping there's enough leaves there for them all to eat. They've eaten my Mom's so thoroughly the past few years, it didn't even show up again this year. Glad my cutting finally took, that wasn't my first try.

I even got a cutting of P. Quadrangularis to root and it is growing.

btw, mine only last about 3 years, then they die from trunk rot, no matter how healthy or how much the butterflies eat them. I think they just grow so fast and furious that the trunks are weak.

Actually the Gulf Frit cats don't kill the vine at least in my experience .. they denude pretty much everything though and the vines come back bigger and better every year!

Sounds great Elaine!
I haven't done it lately, but I had good success propagating Passifloras using serpentine or (air layering) as mentioned here. Hanging a small pot with soil right next to it and pinning a piece down into it - counting ca 5 nodes from the growing tip, removing leaves from the node and scraping the Cambium ever so slightly. It worked the easiest for me.

edited to add - after ca 3 - 4 weeks the then rooted piece can be cut off from the mother plant, it should have enough roots by then. And you don't have to pot it up, since it is already growing in its own pot.

Xeramtheum said:Actually the Gulf Frit cats don't kill the vine at least in my experience .. they denude pretty much everything though and the vines come back bigger and better every year!

The ONLY thing I've seen pollinating them here is bumble bees, not a single butterfly...

I wonder if it's just the weather that had the butterflies migrating south sooner?

It has generally been a pretty cold summer up north, right? Until the last couple of weeks at least.

Last year the Gulf Frits showed up in mid July and there were hundreds of them which was highly unusual for my area. I was wondering if all the chemical dispersants they used for the oil spill was giving them brain damage and confusing them. The year before they showed up in September and with a moderate, pretty much normal population. This year they started showing up in mid August and have been very sparse. I doubt I've seen more than 30 of them since I first sighted them.

This Summer has been one of the coolest and wettest on record for this area. Long range forecast for the southeast is calling for a colder than normal winter .. the last two winters were way warmer than normal. In fact we had a week of mid 70's this past January and was afraid it was going to be a banner bug year because of only 3 really hard freezes but all the rains we had toward the end of Spring until the mid Summer apparently drowned a lot.

Maybe the drought last year was too much for my Mom's vine, IDK. It was there for about 5-6 years, but nothing this year.

Hope these things are hungry! Found a shoot yesterday - it's gone under the shed attached to the carport and there it was, between our cars, 12 feet away from mama.

purpleinopp said:Maybe the drought last year was too much for my Mom's vine, IDK. It was there for about 5-6 years, but nothing this year.

Hope these things are hungry! Found a shoot yesterday - it's gone under the shed attached to the carport and there it was, between our cars, 12 feet away from mama.

They are so weird doing that..

It makes em awful hard to control, you put it were you want it and it goes wherever it wants to.

I rarely grow invasive or potentially invasive vines in the ground and if i do, it's always in a place where I can control it and surrounded by inhospitable barriers. I remember one year someone sent me some Sweet Autumn Clematis - had no idea of it's growth habits .. when I discovered how invasive it was I Immediately tore it all out of the bed where I had it and put it all in triple plastic leaf bags. The following year I discovered it growing and flowering in an area where I used to dump my grass clippings .. I'm thinking the lawn mower must have run over a piece of it. It took all Summer to get all of it .. at least I thought I had gotten all of it - the following year I saw it again even though I had dug up the main root - at least I though I had .. the following year it showed up again and I went through the whole routine of digging it up. That was last year and I haven't seen it around this year .. keeping my fingers crossed. As pretty as it is, that stuff is like Kudzu - at least for my area.

I went through something similar with Honey Suckle - I knew it was invasive but did not realize how many seed it could produce in one season. After spending at least 15 minutes almost every day cutting off seed pods (there were 5 plants growing on posts) .. I cut it all down to the ground and (discovered there was no way I could dig out the roots), triple bagged it and put black buckets with bricks on the top over the main stems of the plants. It took 4 years for those to finally die - these plants managed to survive for years without light!

Having said that, some Passiflora can be extremely invasive and once they take hold, pretty much impossible to get rid of and oddly enough, pieces that break off will root in a heartbeat under the right conditions.

Yes, thank you. That's why I don't have many vines, no good places to put them in this yard. (Saw sweet A Clem eat a 6-foot privacy fence before, no thanks, you're right!) And you're right, trying to propagate by dropping a piece can be so much harder than trying to eradicate by making sure you don't! But after seeing Mom's getting devastated every year, and several failed propagation attempts, I didn't think it would have the energy to make wayward runners, didn't see that from watching hers all of those years. It's a good defense mechanism for a plant that gets eaten though. An admirable trait. I put this in a kind of wild corner with Lantana and Buddleia anyway. A few smaller plants can easily be relocated if necessary. The big wild things can duke it out, there's mowed lawn around the bed, the carport shed. Obviously this is already past the point of being able to be dug up but I don't want to, I want it there. The whole bed exists for the benefit of butterflies in general. Guess I'll find out how far away the shoots can go... If it can take quite a bit of shade, I could put some along the back fence too, where anything but PI or Kudzu is permitted.

purpleinopp said:.. An admirable trait...

HA!

Smiles! Later the day I wrote this, I did find gulf fritillary caterpillars on this vine. As of a few days ago, it's gone. Might be back to square one... it's not easy to provide host plants consistently.

9/4/13:



same day:



9/11/13:
I don't think all of the caterpillars here were able to complete their mission to become butterflies, but there are many cocoons stuck to things around it.