When I saw two different colors of the passion flowers at the nursery, I wanted both. There's purple and the magenta:
I didn't know that the passionflower (passiflora incarnate) is used to treat anxiety and insomnia. "Scientists believe passionflower works by increasing the levels of a chemical called gamma amino butyric acid (GABA) in the brain. GABA lowers the activity of some brain cells, making you feel more relaxed."
It's a perennial climbing vine. They are easy to grow once established, but can be difficult to keep over winter months because their roots are prone to rot if kept cold and wet.
Passion Flowers have small root systems, making them difficult to transplant. (My friend, Kim, will agree with this as it took her 5 times to transplant a passion vine from her friend's garden.)
Right now, I'm trying to root two from Kim's garden. (The above pictures of the passion vines are in my backyard - I call it the Passion Flower Garden.) The three vines from Kim are in the front garden, planted in the wall box:
In the meantime, there's something you should know about these vines. Butterflies LOVE them. Specifically: Gulf Fritillary
Within MINUTES of planting the vines, butterflies fluttered in. You'd think, "That's great!" Yep, I did too. Let me tell you about butterflies. They lay eggs. The eggs turn into caterpillars.
Meet the Gulf Fritillary caterpillar:
My husband, Greg, said, "He's ugly!" I thought so at first and then I thought he was cute. Within a few weeks, I thought he was horrible....
Let me show you what Mr. Gulf Fritillary in the caterpillar stage does....
He ate a HOLE through the passion flower bud! Through all of them! I took a video and pictures and showed it to a local nursery. The guy, Scott, said, "Normally they don't eat large buds like that. It must have been hungry." Then I showed him a picture of 10 caterpillars in ONE area of the vine, that wasn't all of them. Scott said, "WOW. Looks like every butterfly in your neighborhood came to visit your vine." He gave me a pesticide to use on the vine. The caterpillars had basically killed the passion vine, almost. Scott did add, "The passion vine is a host plant to the butterflies. They don't generally kill the vine, because they need the host alive. But in this situation there are too many caterpillars and you need to give the vine a chance to grow back."
I sprayed the vine down and no caterpillars. Both the magenta and the purple vines are coming back, happy to report! I even have some new purple buds on the vine!
So, if you get the vine, having caterpillars is perfectly OK, but having too many - know that you can do something about it :)
Just wondering why would you kill them all? They already have to deal with every major farm spraying and killing them off. God designed this vine to host butterfly caterpillars first. People just happened to start digging them up and planting them in their yards. This wine grows wild in the South and its very hardy. The plant dies back every year. It has strong roots and even if they eat every single leaf off the plant, it will come back. the roots trail underground and pop up everywhere. Its all by design. I just hate to hear it when people kill caterpillars that they invited to their yard with pesticides. My vine trails everyhwere and if you plant other things around it, you dont notice the goobled up leaves. Also, most bugs are deterred by soapy water sprayed on plants that will deter not not kill them.
ReplyDeleteThey weren't giving the plant any room to grow. This year the vine came back, already huge, so I don't mind the caterpillars going after it. But the first year, they were eating it too much, even the person at the plant nursery said it was too much of an infestation for the plant to make it. Believe me, I won't be killing any this year. One of the vines died because of the caterpillars and I had to go back to get a second one. But it's very healthy now, so caterpillars are welcome :)
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