Horned Melon

I spotted a weird fruit in the produce section of my local grocery store. I had never seen a fruit quite like it, but I had since moving to California seen similar fruits of various sizes; from lychee to durian. It was yellow and covered with plenty of sharp spines. I bought one with my regular groceries, and the check out employee asked me, "Is this good?" I replied, "I have no idea."

So a couple of days later, I was feeling brave. I pulled it from the fridge and having no idea what else to do with it. I sliced it like a kiwi and found that it was about the same color inside. It had pale seeds like those you might find in a "seedless" watermelon, and without knowing what else to do, I took a scoopful on my spoon and tasted it.

It was marvelous. It's described in various ways, but to me it tasted of cucumbers and limes with the texture of gelatin. So this horned melon, or kiwano as it is sometimes called, was not cheap. So, having my propagation trays not quite full of Passiflora seeds, I decided to save a few from my new fruit. I popped those into the little wells, and went on a business trip. Three days later, I have nearly 100% germination in all of the wells. I was not expecting that. Nevertheless, it looks like I won't need to buy that fruit anymore!

Butterfly Eggscapade

While doing rounds this morning and checking on my little plants grown from seed, I spotted a conspicuous yellow spec on one of the rounded leaves of an P. actinia hybrid. I knew what it was before really going in to inspect it, but as I did I noticed another. There had been Gulf Fritillary butterflies flitting about Pergolatory recently. I knew they were laying eggs by their behavior. They would stop as they do near flowers, except they were stopping at leaves, dropping their lower abdomens, and depositing eggs on my collection. The eggs are golden yellow and look like tiny bee hives with a cellular structure. I'm sure most of them die to my insecticides, so I'm not concerned a bit. Otherwise, it would be cause for alarm as those little caterpillars can really do a number.

No May Flower without May Seed!

Today two shipments of seeds arrived today! The first set is from the Passiflora Society International (PSI) http://www.passiflorasociety.org/.

P. gritensis
P. umbilicata
P. tarminiana 'alba'
P. kermesia
P. morifolia

And from an undisclosed donor to Pergolatory I received:

P. lindeniana
P. tulae
P. gibertii-like
P. arbelaezii

I actually only requested P. lindeniana, so when I found that the parcel contained the others, I was surprised and very pleased to see that last one on the list. I had to cross reference with another of my posts to check my suspicions  but I was correct! P. arbelaezii is a n=12! That means when P. tetranda arrives, I'll have twice as many n=12 passiflora to test against P. cirrhiflora (assuming she blooms)!

Update: I'm counting sprouts now.

6 P. gritensis
26 P. umbilicata
6   P. tarminiana 'alba'
0   P. kermesia
4   P. morifolia
13   P. lindeniana
1   P. tulae
1   P. gibertii-like
0   P. arbelaezii
2   P. sidifolia x (P. miersii x P. kermesina)

Getty Garden

I went to the Getty Museum in L.A. this last week. It was a beautiful 70°F weekday, so there were no crowds. The exhibits were marvelous as per usual, but the garden was in rare form as well. The angel trumpets were in full bloom as well as nearly everything else. The pictures speak for themselves.

Before the Story of Pergolatory

I was recently contacted by a new friend on the Facebook Passiflora page and a mutual friend of some other contacts. He had a wealth of information for me regarding the lineage of my plants. In particular it turns out that P. x exoniensis, P. parritae, my former P. 'Mission Dolores', and my recently acquired P. membranacea are all very likely clones of plants that he owned. It's a small (and friendly) passi world as it turns out.

In addition to this information he was kind enough to send along pictures of the plants that he owned!