This year I decided to challenge my gardening skills by planting some unusual ornamental plants that don’t normally live in dry, desert regions like New Mexico. Previously, I posted about the weird-looking and poisonous gloriosa lily that’s blooming on our front patio:
Above is another odd plant that was a challenge to grow: the passion flower, which one of numerous species of tropical vines growing in the Americas and Asia. It was in a pot, but I trained it to climb the desert willow tree (not a true willow) that adjoins the patio. The only problem was that when it flowered, it was too high in the tree to get a really great shot, so the one above will have to suffice.
Here is the vine crawling up the tree:
Some passionflowers produce edible fruits, but I’m not sure if this is one of them or not. I doubt that it would have time to ripen before the first frost. I will have to cut the vine off before the first freeze and overwinter this plant in the greenhouse, and next year I’ll transplant it into a pot with its own trellis and train the vine into a dense stand with a lot of flowers. Finally, here’s a better look at one of the flowers of a different, even weirder passion flower with what looks like a regal fritillary on it.
