One in the Palmeri...Sublanceolata

I woke up this morning for work, gazed out from the second story to see if any of my plants were in bloom. Particularly, I had noticed that there were shades of pink within the Passiflora palmeri bud the evening prior. From my vantage I could tell that the sepals were separating, but the flower wasn't in bloom yet. Throughout my morning I checked on its status, and little by little it peeled away it's layers until by the time I was ready to hop in the car, it was fully opened.

I took some pictures, enjoyed its rich pink petals and neat crown of purple speckled filaments, and then dabbed on some P. foetida pollen. We will wait and see if it's that easy.

Update: And now I've come to find that this species is no longer classified as P. palmeri. It's now P. sublanceolata, which doesn't make a good pun in the slightest.

Update 2: I have a nice lime sized fruit maturing! Unless it's "selfed", it should be P. palmeri var sublanceolata x P. foetida 'urbaniana'

Easy as Pie

My best friend and farmers' market fanatic decided to surprise me with a 1/2 pound of P. edulis fruit recently. What did she do with them? Turn them into pie (aka liquid cake)! I'm not sure what we did besides strain the pulp to extract the juice for the filling. I remember the buying the crust too, but I'm a miserable cook and just played sous chef where I could while she was making it. We had to add some passion fruit juice from a carton to yield enough liquid, but the result was a mostly fresh passion fruit pie that I devoured over the course of a few days with some mangos.

Another Day on the Penninsula

I went back to South Coast Botanical Garden again to see if any of the Decaloba in the greenhouse were in bloom. Answer: none. There were only a couple of P. 'Lavendar Lady' and the rest was all green and buds. Maybe in a month there will be flowers to see. It was a quick visit inside, and a slightly longer one outside the gates where the P. 'Blue-Eyed Susan' was in bloom by the bushels. The light was harsh, but I snapped a few shots before heading home.