Maypop (maybe) -- germination (barely) -- complicated (definitely) | Passiflora incarnata

[@laureldunn3154]

Holy cow this sciencer is smart, diligent, honest and mixes his presentations with just the right amount of humor and humility. Well done once again!

[@cocopuff239]

It was a great video, listened to it didn't watch but because of how he laid it out I'll rewatch it later when I have the time.

[@princekai1]

This is probably the best information I've been able to find unless I want to start going through multiples of different forums on passion fruit germination than I care for, so thank you very much for the information because I just got my seeds today and hearing that a dark soak helps with germination is wonderful even if it brings up the rate by a small percentage. I'm going to get started right now.

[@bobboau7364]

I had very good results germinating wild seeds. I stored the seeds in a box after eating the wild fruit (in october) until early March. I soaked them in a cup of water over night. I planted them in a bunch of cells and made sure the soil in the cells stayed moist. It took more than a month for them to germinate, but when they did ALL of them did. I had like 90 plants late april/early may. Had to give most of them away. The ones I planted have completely covered my trellis. I've had many flowers and I just got my first ripe fruit. (Very late september) The first fruit didn't have great flavor, but the second one (which was spherical shaped) tasted great! Hoping I get a lot more fruit off it before winter. There seem to be about a hundred fruits but they are raking their time ripening.

[@joelroose2830]

I think you may just have had bad quality seeds, they should start germinating well within a week when you keep them at 35°C after sowing. The good news is: your plant definitely looks like an incarnata. The flower from the beginning of the video is P. caerulea, the flower shown at 5:00m is P. alata. The pictures from the seed vendor don't show incarnata at all, the closest is the second picture, which is an incarnata × cincinnata hybrid. The statement that incarnata and edulis are hard to distinguish is very strange to me, hybrids may have blurred the lines in some cases, but the differences between the two species are quite obvious, for instance: one is a herbaceous perennial, the other a woody vine

[@theekdunn]

Ya it was impossible to find stock video of incarnata, specifically. Though I did call the first one "Passionflower" not "incarnata", I should have added an annotation to make it very clear that these aren't incarnata. The second one was more ambiguous. Also, I didn't go too deep into identification because this video is specifically about germination. I'll be making a separate video for identification. Anyway, I will add a note in the description and in the closed captions. Thanks for the correct id's. The difficulting in distinguishing the two came directly from the literature: "a survey of literature revealed that P. incarnata has often been confused with Passiflora edulis Sims because of the strong resemblance of morphological and microscopic characteristics of these two plants of the same family (Figs. 1 and 2)." (Dhawan et al. 2001) There are more examples of this confusion in the research report as well. The seed vendor shown at 5:32 was not where I bought mine. It was merely an example of how bad the industry is at identifying Passiflora.

[@gregorymyers8780]

Let’s talk about the biology of the plant - this seed is supposed to be eaten - by a bird (Carolina parakeet, crow, etc.) or omnivore (raccoon, opossum, etc.). I’m trying to germinate via acid scarification (5%vinegar for 12hrs) to stimulate the seed being eaten and then warm moist germination over a heat pad- skipping cold stratification for now. I’ll let you know how the germination process goes.

[@kerricksanker3051]

Poor Carolina Parakeet 😓😓😓

[@JuliePascal]

Did this work for you?

[@mitchwerbell4679]

@@kerricksanker3051rip American parrot.

[@andreew1488]

By far the best video on this subject!!

[@WilhelmWilder]

I would just like to add - Passiflora Incarnata (at least the wild ones that grow near me) are anything but bland. They taste very similar to the fruit 'Soursop' A strong Banana/Strawberry sometimes grape like or just an overall Fruit Punch flavor. I am cold stratifying seeds right now, and have been for 5 months. I will be growing them solely for their fruit. This really intrigues me, I wonder how severely climate must change their taste? Also of note, the cultivar near me ranges from the size of a Lemon to the size of a large strawberry. (The fruit I am referring to is 100% Passiflora Incarnata - nothing else grows even remotely similar in my region)

[@electricveg]

When I said, "A few varieties... the fruit is rather bland," (0:57) I didn't mean to imply that P. incarnata has bland fruit. Only the "varieties cultivated for their horticultural merits" like P. caerulea. I harvested some fruit at the end of last season from the seeds that were germinated in this video. The fruit is indeed delicious.

[@WilhelmWilder]

@@electricveg did you have to scarify your seeds?

[@mikehome6137]

In Florida if you got a spot you want a passionflower at you just bury a dropped fruit that has dried out. Come next spring it'll pop up. My spring preparation for first mow is to dig up the sucker sprouts, trim the root, dip in root powder and plant in small solo cups.

[@GullahGeecheeFarmer]

Very informative video

[@NickleJ]

The rhizomes can be hard to get to. When I've tried to dig up wild rhizomes in the past all I've ever found was underground stem. That's my best guess.

[@twinsgardening896]

Huh. Very interesting. I see this was posted last year-- any updates? Also I am now very curious about the "self sterile" part, which could explain why we never got fruit in Pennsylvania..... but also we've been hand-pollinating all of our flowers this season with themselves and have had dozens of fruit set. So now next time I see a flower opening soon, I will bag it and hand pollinate as I normally do, and see if our plants are indeed self-compatible! I'm reading the sources on your blog now, and if I confirm our plant(s?) are self compatible, we'll definitely be posting videos!

[@nathaliewalker7468]

My seedlings took at least 6 mths to grow plant. Glad to hear at least 2 plants to fruit. It was the purple fruit that I bought from store. Tell me if my plants will fruit, please?? Thank you 🙏

[@Ms.Merotica]

Not convinced you need two plants for fruit since my one plant produces lots of fruit. Bumblebees have co-evolved with Passiflora incarnata and cover the flowers. No neighbors near me grow this plant and have not seen it growing wild. Ordered one rooted cutting online and it established the following year. Growing in zone 7a North Carolina.

[@skybirdmakes]

I've been lucky enough to have self compatible Incarnata, producing fruit from just a single vine. Mine has slightly smaller flowers then I've seen on other plants, about 2-2.5 in with white/green petals and a lavender-purple-white & pink corona with red stems :)

[@FrugalGarden]

At the beginning of the video, you said their preferred method of spreading was via animals eating the fruit. Also on your updated procedure, you said you had a great success after a 48 leaching and using a temperature at 30-35c. Do you think these two facts are related?

[@electricveg]

Digestion could be a form of leaching. That's partly why I recommended it. Stomach acid and digestive enzymes would certainly help remove the slimy aril when eaten whole. When you buy seeds online, however, the aril is already removed, so acid scarification isn't necessary. Leaching is just a way to remove any residue that the vendor missed. The ideal temperature for germination being so close to mammalian body temperature is definitely interesting. Perhaps incarnata seeds only require unusually high temperatures for the first 24-48 hours. It might be worth running some simulated digestion tests to see how the seed germination rate is affected. Very interesting!

[@mrmrmanman7845]

I have tried germinating before - all seeds failed. Now I've gotten new seeds for the coming season. But, should I cold stratify? One should reckon that is the case, since it grows in cold climate. Anyways, last batch I tried germinating at around 15-30°C (during day night cycle). I may try to have them at 30+°C continually this time.

[@ConstantGardener-q9q]

I tried winter snowing because the seeds said it needed winter cold stratification. However, I got null. Are you saying that no cold strat is needed? I ended up buying 3 small plants last week and they are going crazy

[@lorenzm3189]

I think the reason why these seeds are not produced en masse is because you can relatively easily propagate the plant by cuttings compared to seed germination. Unless i missed something in the video you didn't cold stratify the seeds, which is why none have germinated. At least i have read that this is required and a couple of years ago i was able to germinate them by sowing them in autumn outside in pots with erratic germination during the next spring until early summer.

[@electricveg]

I mention stratification in the "Prior Art" (05:08) section and again at 08:48 as one of the oft recommended procedures for passionflowers. However, when directly compared to other seed pretreatments in the research literature on incarnata specifically, stratification only helps when your seed germination conditions are suboptimal. Just in case, I have some seeds stratifying in my refrigerator right now anyway. www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/10/937 Were you germinating incarnata, caerulea, or edulis seeds? As I talked about at 05:43, they are easily misidentified even by experienced botany researchers. So it isn't a stretch to say that a lot of mail-order seeds are potentially those other species that may very well benefit from stratification. I agree that cuttings are the best propagation method but I can't seem to find anyone who sells them that way. I'm going to investigate cutting and rhizome propagation more thoroughly in a later video, but I talked about it briefly at 14:05. Do you know of an online vendor who is selling cuttings right now?

[@noreaster4194]

@@electricvegAlot of major gardening catalogs and online nurseries sell potted P. Incarnata plants