Randy,

I would be happy to be the first to respond, mi amigo.

First let me say thank you for this post. I think it may be up to the few and proud of us to revitalize this forum, and get some great conversations started. It's been a little... slow in the past.

Let me get the question I cannot speak to out of the way first: I have never grown P. edulis indoors, or protected in any way for that matter. I have P. edulis 'Fredrick' out in the open with no protection in a large pot, and it overwinters with just a little damage. It comes back fine, and is growing like a beast right now. I hope to soon be growing P. edulis 'Nancy Garrison' as well, (thanks to you), as I have read that it is even better at frost tolerance.

Next, anything I have ever taken indoors has suffered from the dryness associated with central heat, a wood burning stove, and watering difficulty indoors. This year I plan to make a space in my garage dedicated to Passifloras with a timed "grow-light" like the pot-growers use. I have too many that will need some sort of protection to let them wither in the winter.

Now, on that same note, even though I plan on protecting some this year, we also always test our limits. We are in zone denial. Dozens, maybe hundreds of plants that should not live here, we "force" to live here. Sometimes that means we have to get creative sometime we have to get Very creative. For instance, (though no one seems to have ever heard of this spectacular plant), we grow Mackaya bella outdoors and it has no issues whatsoever. Our Aphelandra squarrosa lost all his leaves in the same pot, (though heÂs fine now). There are countless othersÂ

On to the Passifloras, the subject you actually posted about.

First, let me tell you our climatic conditions, (I almost typed climactic that would have been a bit Freudian). In the last 10 years, our lowest temp was 19 degrees. Usually, in winter we get about 12 -16 days of sub-32 degrees, with our lowest night normally about 23/24. We almost never get snow, maybe once per decade for a couple of hours. Our only rain comes in the winter months, most heavily in Dec and Jan. If you plan a spring, summer or fall BBQ, you can count on it. No chance of the game being called here. We almost donÂt have a spring, and barely a fall. Tuesday the trees have leaves and Wednesday they donÂt. Our summers can be brutal. We just had 5 days in a row triple digits two of them were 107 and 108. ItÂs also very dry think desert. Thankfully, we have misters, drippers, sprinklers, et cetera, or the only thing we would grow would be California natives... yuck!

So, let me think We have no trouble growing P. citrina in the ground, though it is supposed to like 45 degrees minimum. Oh man, this is going to be hard we have too many. How about this: In Ulmer and MacdougalÂs book, (if you donÂt have it, you either know too much to be reading this or if you are reading this, you seriously need to buy it. Go here: http://www.amazon.com/Passiflora-Passionflowers-World-Torsten-Ulmer/dp/0881926485/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246590216&sr=8-1), if they state the minimum temperatures for a species or hybrid to live to 5 or lower degrees Celcius, I can grow it outdoors. If it states 7 to 9 degrees C, I need to protect it somehow, be it mulch, overhead cover, 3-wall patio cover, et cetera. If it states 10 or even higher, (for the most part, though there are exceptions), I will most likely have trouble, and at the very least I need to bring it indoors or into the garage space I am making this year. Actually, I am planning on putting my "7+ degree" plants in there this winter also, so they have much less stress, and flourish faster. I am tired of having plants take till May to start growing again.

Randy, and anyone else who happens to read this, I am sorry that I cannot give you a full list. This is the best I can do at the moment. IÂm a bad plant journal guyÂ

P. mooreana is one that should definitely not have survived with the slight overhead protection we gave it. It has been blooming one flower per day for a week or so right now, and smells fantastic!

Another that surprised us was P. herbertiana, which should not make it out in the cold. We had a tiny cutting, (which is supposed to be very hard to do Crystal is the "rooting queen"), out in the open, no protection whatsoever last year, and it made it fine. It is growing great right now.

P. ÂCoral Sea grows rampant in our cold and heat, though it rarely blooms. ItÂs a massive vine. It is supposed to only like it up to 86 or so, and doesnÂt like it below freezing. No problems here. I am planning on making this a grafting root-stock for less heat-hardy Passies.

But, one other fairly non-relatable, (due to rarity) Passiflora that I can speak on is the P. umbilicata x P. tucumanensis. This is weird. It is the same cross, (and probably a seedling from the same fruit from Henk), as P. ÂJuttaÂ. Mine is slightly different as it has two full rows of coronal filaments. Both parents are supposed to be extremely cold tolerant, but not heat tolerant at all. Mine grows and blooms in the spring and fall, with only some bud-drop and a few month bloom hiatus in the hottest summer months. It still does quite well, with very little if any damage. Granted, cuttings of it have died in the summer, but that may have been my fault. ;-)

IÂm sure there are more, but my mind fails me I will have to consult Crystal later and post again.

Eric

Hi Eric,

Thanks for all the info--the rule of thumb for the Ulmer and MacDougal book is incredibly useful--especially since anything that grows for you should grow for us. I'm very surprised that your P. edulis 'Frederick' doesn't suffer more damage. Mine had serious damage after our 26 F morning in January (which melted the Naranjilla next to it, as expected--I still have one in a pot with tons of fruit).

My example of not-supposed-to-happen of the day is seeing the first tiny bud on my P. exoniensis x parritae, which is supposed to bloom in the late summer and fall, so the timing does make sense. Most things you read suggest that all Tacsonia buds are ejected at 90 F. We hit 98 or 99 on Saturday and maybe two degrees cooler on Sunday. I suppose it's still possible the bud will eventually abort, so I'll keep an eye on it.

One of its parents, P. exoniensis, is right next to it, and the weekend's heat didn't even phase it. It opened a new bud today. This year has had an unusually large number of very hot days and the Tacsonias (and P. membranacea) all seem to be doing fine. I'm still waiting for P. tripartita var. mollissima to bloom...but it's growing like crazy. As I've mentioned elsewhere on this forum, P. exoniensis x parritae grows faster when it's above 90 and although I haven't measured it I suspect that my newest Tacsonia, P. parritae x antioquiensis ('Mission Dolores')does the same.

You do mean P. 'Coral Seas' and not P. 'Coral Glow', right? I believe the latter is supposed to be the more heat tolerant of the two.

Randy, since the plants I have now are so young or new to me, I can't properly answer all of your questions as most of them were not transplanted into the ground until after the danger of cold had passed. But during my first attempt at planting Passiflora, I had a few very young Passies along a chain link fence which all died due to repeated chomps from a neighbor's horses. One of them, I am pretty sure it was called 'Star of Surbiton', was partially protected by a wooden post and lived the longest. I successfully left this in the ground over the 2007-2008 winter with no protection at all and it did just fine (until it was eventually ripped out by a pony later in the year). That winter was rather mild in Florida and I don't think we had anything close to a freeze.