Incarnata map
Gulf fritillary caterpillar, passion flower plants are their larval host plants.
I have not personally seen any incarnata here yet. I have seen the Gulf fritillary hit my blue passion fruit plants and eat them to the ground.
Passiflora edulis is the passion fruit I have eaten the most of in my lifetime.
Incarnata is a tough plant. How much that incarnata map has grown as people have spread it is a testament to its adaptability. Happy to send you some material sometime. This year I’m hoping to make pollinations for a red fruit cold hardy hybrid with an incarnata/edulis/flavicarpa mix.
Can confirm that range map is now even larger - I’ve got passiflora incarnata growing just north of the great lakes, in Southwestern Ontario, Canada.
Zone 5b, requires a mild first winter to survive without protection.
At the time of European colonization, incarnata range was only up to the mid Atlantic eastern US, around Maryland. It’s really expanded since then as the map shows. Going back hundreds of years prior to colonization, and prior to native Americans expanding its through propagation, incarnata inhabited a relatively tight corner of the around Florida.
Flavicarpa would be an interesting mix to put into a edulis/incarnata hybrid. Are you trying to gain size in the fruit or modification of the flavor profile or both?
One of the jumping off points for my passiflora breeding was incarnata x flavicarpa crossed back to incarnata. I grew out the seeds from other hardy passionfruit experimenters. In the few back crosses I didn’t find large fruit, but the full hardiness was there, and the flavor already better than any incarnata to my taste—juicy orange arils with tropical flavor, but also interestingly not very sour. I took this back cross parent then started making crosses to other hybrids. Now I’m working with the seedlings of those. At this point I no longer am growing pure species.
Here is a cluster of seedlings popping up, mostly incarnata but 1/8 flavicarpa. Those with the yellow leaves have more of the flavicarpa phenotype.
Do you have it growing as a perennial up there? I’m just slightly south of you (sameish latitude?) in NH (5b) and would be really interested in growing it. Where did you find seed/cuttings for it?
They use the blue passionflower as root stock to graft edulis onto in Australia that I remember. However the edulis graft can die off leading to shooting and the rootstock can also send up shoots while the graft is still growing. What gardeners there are finding is that when the edulis dies off they are left with a rootstock eradication project in their climate. Flowers on the blue are prettier but the fruit subpar.
The blue has darker leaves and five. The edulis is lighter green and three. Flavicarpa in the photograph reminds me of edulis more.
Yes! It took a few tries, an early start and a mild winter, but my P. incarnata from last year survived including an aboveground stem and is now leafing out 
I got seed from Experimental Farm Network. Be warned dry maypop seed has fairly erratic germination. My single survivor plant was actually a leftover seed in reused seed starting mix that germinated a year after I’d given up on that particular project.
I was so unconvinced any maypop would ever overwinter that I plopped it down in a fairly exposed, damp cold pocket. Survivor maypop doesnt seem to care. In retrospect, I suspect my main issue with previous attempts was starting/transplanting plants too late for them to build enough of a root system to survive winter unprotected.
My guess is that plants started wayy early or overwintered with heavy protection the first year have a pretty decent shot of surviving future winters in zone 5b. If you can provide a protected microclimate, your odds are even better.
Well that’s all good to hear! I got my seeds from EFN. I was stratifying them in the house (our house gets really cold lol 
), but when we had a melt off late winter, I stuck the seeds in the ground on the south side of the house. There are no signs of them coming up yet, but who knows.
I also got some root cuttings (literally - she dove a shovel into the ground and gave me some chunks of roots) from a friend in MO. They take over her greenhouse and she’s got a mostly-hate relationship with them at this point. She thinks they’re maypops instead of actual passionfruit, so I’m hoping they can work on perennializing up in NH next year. This year I’m in OK for work, so this year’s growth will confuse them due to an entirely different hot-dry climate down here.
When/if they finally do sprout up north, they’ll have a warmish microclimate next to the house for protection. Though I may throw some mulch behind them to keep the wind from blowing under the house right over them. Maybe a strawbale or something.
