The Tropical Fruit Forum

Tis the season for tropical eggplant relatives to ripen. Most years I only grow one species at a time in order to have clean seed since all of these will cross with each other. I've had better luck getting early fruiting by rooting cuttings in the fall, overwintering in the greenhouse and planting out the following May or whenever night time lows get above 50 degrees F, so this year I went ahead and let some of them fruit. I've heard that Cocona crossed with Lulo makes a superior juice so I may attempt that cross next year. This year has been very hot and extremely dry so I'm surprised I got anything off of them. I'm in zone 7b (Raleigh NC)



Naranjilla  Solanum quitoense




Lulo  Solanum quitoense 'Lulo'  (scientific name is in dispute) I treat it is as an improved cultivar since the fruit is so much bigger





here's a shot showing both fruit side by side





Cocona  Solanum sessiliflorum      just starting to flower. these are seedlings I plan on planting in the ground next spring.

Those are grand ideas. I made jelly with some of my fruit last year and it took a while to find enough ripe fruit and process it into juice. Even with my super fruitful vines. I think a bigger market would be with the medicinal herb folks. I don't know if it is the dried flowers or leaves or roots but there is a demand for P. incarnata plant parts.

I've always sown the seeds in the fall and looked for sprouts the following summer - let winter do the hard work. Sometimes they sprout earlier and sometimes later. There is always a crowd of pots off in the corner of my garden during the winter. Even though I have a greenhouse where I sprout and root all sorts of plants, I find that winter hardy plants do better if allowed to sprout the normal way rather than speed things up in the heated gh - in the end you end up weak plants.

Many years ago I used to be a licensed wildlife rescue volunteer (I was working as a zookeeper at the time and lots of wild orphans showed up at the zoo's front gate). I raised hundreds of baby squirrels. Most were too wild to consider keeping as a pet but there was one that stayed tame for a few years. I named him Spasm (Spaz or Spazzy for short). I never kept him in a cage, he just came and went whenever he wanted. He loved all humans and did the purring noise and growling noise just like Earl. Some people he would want to wrestle with others he would act nervous around. He was actually a great pet while he stayed around. After a few years he started spending more and more time up in the trees and he eventually never came back down to anyone, including me. Usually squirrels get to a point where they start biting and you gladly take them to the forest and freedom, but Spasm was always pretty calm.

I collected mine from the wild by gathering seeds and they've always been true to the original form (shorter vines with tons of flowers and large fruit). I'm getting ready to try rooting a bunch of other stuff so I will snip a few of these to see if they root.

There is talk that someone involved in horticulture at some university years ago was trying to develop commercial P. incarnata and also hybrids with P. edulis. With the goal being better flavor, bigger fruit and adding some cold hardiness to P. edulis. He accomplished the crosses but nothing ever happened to his research as far as I know. Local researchers/friends of mine are hoping to find any plants or material he may have left behind. I think he was based at a  school in Florida and that this was many years ago. They mentioned all this when they toured my garden and saw my wimpy collection of passionvines.

Here in Raleigh NC, with NC State, I get toured by hort people all the time and more than once someone that has lived in South America or Mexico just happened to be here in the fall when my vines were dropping fruit and even they remarked that the flavor was just as good as P. edulis back home. My only complaint is that the fruit is never full of juice, the air space inside is too big.

I have the same problem with any Passionvine I grow in a pot. I use just regular bagged potting soil. I should probably add some compost. They do seem to be hungry plants. They probably want a dilute fertilizer treatment every week, which is what I do for my citrus trees but for some reason I never think of doing to these guys even though they are near each other. I will say that my P. edulis suffered greatly and then all of a sudden turned around and now look super healthy. I thought they were going to die. Maybe their roots have grown down into the ground through the drain holes in their pots. I won't know until winter when I have to move them into the greenhouse.

As far as the P. incarnatas growing out in the yard - my soil is medium quality, kind of sandy in spots, kind of rich and dark in spots. I cannot determine a rhyme or reason for the spots they pop up in, so I'm not sure if it is soil quality that guides them.

Yes, you're grafted vine would die back and next years growth would revert back to the rootstock. I would be better to try and root cuttings, but I don't know when to do that with passionvines.

I wait until the spines/hairs are easily brushed off the fruit before I harvest mine. They are harsh flavored but work well mixed with other juices or sweetened.

I see that my small tree does show signs of Cedar-Quince Rust on a few of the fruits so this plant is not as disease free as sometimes claimed. The forest around my property has a few Eastern Red Cedar or juniper trees and the list of fruiting plants that suffer from one of the many forms of Rust disease keeps growing. I've seen Cedar-Apple Rust, Cedar-Quince Rust and Cedar-Hawthorn Rust so far and it affects pears, serviceberries and now medlar. Some plants only show a little damage but others are killed by it.

I think they take a couple of months to ripen. I seem to remember September being the month I normally start eating them. Because my vines are growing all over the garden (which is full of long rows of various fruiting bushes) I don't always stay on top of the passion fruits. I usually see them lying on the ground when I mow the grass strips running between the rows. I did notice a few thumb tip sized fruits forming this weekend.

I also think that they only seem to make fruit after the summer equinox. I think the fruits forming now take a while to ripen but the fruits formed later seem to ripen quicker so that everybody gets ripe by first frost in late October/early November.

I have most of Lee Reich's books - I'll have to look for that chapter.

At this point of the summer I have fruit on three types of passionvines in my garden. The P. edulis (purple fruit, grown from seed) has a couple of fruit, one of which has ripened and had a nice rich flavor. The P. incarnata that I mentioned earlier is in full bloom and I see fruits forming. And surprise surprise a small potted 'Lady Margaret' hybrid (Passiflora incarnata crossed with Passiflora coccinea) has one small fruit on it. All are supposed to be edible so I will taste and see how they are.

After reading your comments on container growing versus in the ground - I think I am going to set up an area in the garden to sink large pots for my wild collected P. incarnata's. I need a way to make harvesting the fruit easier so some sort of trellis with the plants in large sunken pots should work. Out of all of them that I grow these guys have the best flavor.

I got an 'Orinoco' to fruit but I had to dig it up one very cold winter and keep it in a pot that I moved in and out for a few years. After harvesting the fruit (two clusters from two different stems) I cut the tree back and buried it in mulch and leaves for the winter. We got very cold last winter and it did not survive.

I want to try the smaller trees with smaller bananas that ripen quicker - like Viente Cohol. My plan is to grow them for a couple of years in pots, shelter them in the greenhouse for the winter and then plant them outdoors in the spring when they are large enough to fruit and hopefully get ripe fruit before first frost in the fall.

Our local university is working on breeding a seedless Musa veluntina which is hardy here in zone 7b. The bananas are small and waxy but supposedly edible.

I haven't seen that hybrid available here in the US. I have Shippova (Sorbus x Pyrus), Ivan's Beauty and Ivan's Belle - I believe one is a Sorbus crossed with a Hawthorn and the other is a Sorbus crossed with Aronia. They are just now reaching fruiting size and they are also just now showing signs are Cedar Hawthorn Rust or Cedar Quince Rust.