The Tropical Fruit Forum
Tropical Fruit => Tropical Fruit Discussion => Topic started by: FlyingFoxFruits on November 01, 2012, 04:05:00 PM
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A few months ago, I forgot to post about what I saw.
But a passion fruit vine (of a large fruited yellow type), had a small lizard (3inch) sleeping in a coiled tendril.
Before the lizard could awake the tendril had coiled around it's body, so it could not escape.
I intervened and released the thankful cuban brown anole....it was surely about to be strangled by the vine!
I wonder how many victims a wild tree claims in this manner? and what nutrients it gains from these incidents.
this plant in my opinion isn't far off from being considered a meat eater.
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Passionfruit vines will grab anything to get a hold and climb .
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Yes, I've always been impressed with how quickly the tendrils will move- I've had a ban on Passiflora for 10 years due to their aggressive nature as all my plants are crammed together for the winter, and I don't have enough room to let them grow. Whenever I try to grow one I find I spend 30-45 minutes every day unwrapping tendrils from my other plants, which they quickly overgrow if I don't fight them on a daily basis. I've grown a lot of different kinds of plants, and the Passiflora sp. are by far the fastest-growing (when happy) of anything I've ever seen.
Even outdoors in Colorado (zone 5: -15 to -25 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter!) P. incarnata and P. 'Incense' are weedy in-ground, growing to easily 150 square feet in a 3-month season in their second year, even fruiting prolifically when hand- cross-pollinated. The fruits never have time to ripen before a hard freeze, but the plants put on an amazing show of flowers. By the third year I have suckers coming up 20 feet from the original plant and have to start killing them off before they take over my whole yard.
Just 8 weeks ago my local plant nursery had some Passiflora phoenicea on sale for less than $5.00- with buds and blooms on them- and I just couldn't resist... The flowers are so beautiful and fragrant. But they need room to grow and I don't have it, so I already had to get rid of the plant.
Kevin