As many of you already know, I love my passion fruit vines! I was very disappointed last year when a spring drought pretty much wiped them out, so I was definitely pleased when some began coming up this spring. I waited anxiously for the first flowers to appear and for the vines to grow to a height where they would start climbing. All was going very well until the late spring or early summer, depending on your point of view. We had several periods there where we would go awhile without rain, and each time as I was about to break down and water the passion fruit, it would rain. My feeling on yard work and mainly having native plants is that if it can’t survive on it’s own then it won’t do well here, but I was about to actually water the passion fruit vines! Well, anyhow, now we’re back to regular afternoon rains, so watering is unnecessary.

I love the passion fruit vines so much for several reason. I think the flowers are very cool and exotic looking, and they are so much fun to photograph since they are so complex. The fruit is amazingly delicious as long as you don’t mind all the seeds (which I do not). It’s fun to watch the flowers begin to change into the small fruits and then to watch the fruit grow and then ripen. I do have to keep an eye on the fruit since I’m definitely not the only one who likes it. Many of the wild birds like it as well as the squirrels and a whole host of insects. I don’t mind sharing, but I don’t want them getting all of it, either! Of course, the fruit and flowers both attract a lot of wildlife which greatly increases my photographic opportunities for them.

And finally, the vines themselves provide a lot of photo opps. As they grow and climb, the vines put out a lot of these curly shoots that will latch onto anything in order to help the vine climb. That’s definitely not unique to the passion fruit vines. I see similar structures on lots of climbing vines including the pipe vine outside my bathroom, the summer grapes on my fence, and the sweet potato vine out by the dog house. The passion fruit vines seem to have more of them that are longer and with more curls than many of the other vines. The curls are fun to photograph, too, so tonight I decided to put together a few of the images that I’ve taken of them over the years