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Gardening in New Zealand

banana passionfruit

23 years ago

any one know where I can get plants seeds of the banana passionfruit?

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Comments (12)

marion_c
23 years ago
They are considered a noxious weed in Wellington. We are continually pulling out small seedlings.
Liz_w
23 years ago
They're considered a noxious weed here as well & I'm continaully getting rid of them too.
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Kiwi_oz
23 years ago
A noxious weed in Auckland too.
Heather
riverstone6
23 years ago
This thing is NOXIOUS full stop.DOC has it high on the hit list and no reputable garden supplier handles it--why would you want to plant a nasty!!
erphy
Original Author
23 years ago
oh i didnt know it was a doc nasty...it is for the fruit that im after it..but if ts invasive forget it..thanks crew
Liz_w
23 years ago
I was cruising the net & discovered this site :

http://www.landsendtexotics.co.nz/cat_edibles.shtml

They sell red flowered banana passionfruit which are less vigorous than the pink flowered ( noxious weedy ) ones.

Subtropica sells a vanilla one that is non-invasive too that I am thinking of getting for my tunnel house.
Neilb
23 years ago
Hello From Aus
Do the weedy types have good eating fruit or are they different to the good fruited ones.
Neil
Liz_w
23 years ago
I've never tried eating one, but my Mum was over here a while ago & she reckons that they're nice. I have also seen old ladies wandering around the bottom of the road with bags full of the fruit so I'm guessing they were going to eat them.
ursus4u
22 years ago
The Red Flowerd species is Antioquiensis , and is not on the Noxious weeds list
vetivert8
22 years ago
Banana passionfruit are worth eating. Don't seem as acid as the usual ones.

They grow wild in Wellington and are rampant in the Marlborough Sounds. Reasonably frost hardy, and the vine lasts longer than the black one.

It can be 'nasty' as a garden escape - along with lots of house plants such as asparagus fern.

Your regional council probably has a list of no-noes for garden centres to stock and would gladly give you a copy. They're not quite so good at providing alternatives, though...

Northland's council has a comprehensive list, probably because they get stuff blown across from Oz and all sorts of sub-tropicals. Things that get kept civilised by frost really go to town up there! I'd never seen fields of wild ginger and watsonias, ixias, and giant ageratum until I went north of Whangarei. Scary.
digger1_ihug_co_nz
15 years ago
Banana passionfruit are an excellent, edible, tasty and very cheap (FREE) fruit.
Instead of our quaintly-anarchic guardians of public morals trying to "wipe those really nasty weeds" out, they should encourage sensible horticultural practices.
When grown and harvested with care, the possums should never get them.
In the 60 years I have grown/eaten them, I have never seen a single fruit attacked by birds.
If DoC, et al, did a real job on the damned possums, the unwanted spread of banana passionfruit would be decimated in no time.
vetivert8
15 years ago
Hi Ian WN

I think you'll find that a lot of pest animal control is now done by the local regional council. DoC has been underfunded for years and often can only afford pest control on islands to protect rare and endangered species. The old days of Forest Service doing large control operations and eradications went with the passing of NZFS (and its useful budget) in 1987.

Totally agree with you about the yummyness of banana passionfruit - and being free. There are sites around Wellington City where they dangle from overgrown shrubs and are there for the picking. Much nicer than the black ones, IMO.

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