The easy-care passion flowers are perfect for going among the plant breeders themselves and perhaps creating their own species. But even without breeding ambitions, you can grow Passiflora yourself from seeds or cuttings.
Growing passiflora from seeds
With a bit of luck, your passion flower will produce fruit after flowering, from which you can eventually obtain seeds, provided the fruit ripens. Before fruit formation, however, fertilization is necessary, which usually has to be done by hand. To do this, use a brush to transfer the pollen from one flower to another, but be careful: some Passiflora species are self-fertile, i. H. no second plant is necessary for pollination. Other species, on the other hand, only bear fruit if pollination is carried out by a foreign Passiflora. In this case, it must not be a clone of the first, since it is genetically the same and is therefore not recognized as a foreign plant. Genetic clones are obtained by propagating cuttings.
Growing from seed takes warmth and patience
Of course, you don't need to get the seeds from fruit yourself, you can simply buy seed sachets. Please note, however, that the germination capacity of these seeds decreases over time and that dried seeds also take significantly longer to germinate. A lot of patience is required for passion flowers anyway, as it can sometimes take months for the seedling to emerge from the growing substrate. Proceed as follows when cultivating seeds:
- Clean fresh seeds carefully from the pulp.
- Soak dried seeds in lukewarm water for 24 hours before sowing.
- Fill coconut substrate ("Kokohum") or potting soil in small pots.
- Press seeds loosely - Passiflora needs light to germinate.
- Moisten seeds and soil.
- Keep as warm as possible, temperatures between 20 and 25 °C are ideal.
- Place grow pots on or near a heater in an indoor propagator.
- Location should be as bright as possible.
- Always keep substrate moist.
- Have patience.
Propagation by cuttings is particularly easy
You don't need to be quite as patient with the propagation from cuttings as you would with growing from seeds - passion flowers can usually be grown very easily from cuttings. Choose young but already mature shoots, as experience has shown that they root better than very young branches. A rooting hormone helps with rooting, otherwise the same applies as with the seeds: lots of warmth, light, moisture and patience.
tips and tricks
If you don't want to breed yourself, but just have several passion flowers, propagation from cuttings is a better choice. Passionflowers grown from cuttings flower faster than seedlings, which usually flower in their second year.