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Galega x hartlandii 'Lady Wilson'  On Monday, our garden was included in the HPSO Study Weekend. This is a four-day event that includes speakers, plant/art sales and garden tours. The event rotates every two years between the cities of Portland, Seattle, Victoria B.C. and Vancouver B.C.  It will be 2033 before Portland hosts again. I toured the Portland gardens on Friday and Saturday and will share some photos in my next post. The weather was perfect on those days. Not so much on Monday, the day for the Vancouver, Washington gardens tour, and by late afternoon, the temperature had reached 94. However, it wasn't too bad in the first part of the day, and that's when we received the most visitors. We didn't have an exact count, but making an estimate based on our guestbook, I would say around 200 people. It was a hectic but fun day! We had a lot of visitors from Seattle and areas north of us as attendees were making their way home. Every time we open our garden, there ...

Passionflower

Passionflower  
There are a few blooms this week on Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) "Waterloo Blue". I'm always amazed by the architecture of the blooms. The vine has become quite vigorous over the years and shares an arbor with Sweet Autumn Clematis and a "Rev d'Or" rose. Unfortunately the blooms have never been profuse with lack of sunshine being the probably culprit. It also has a tendency to scamper over other plants. However, it is easy to pull out.


Text and photos by Phillip Oliver, Dirt Therapy

Comments

  1. I have always admired the passion vine. I don't think I can grow it here. I have a clematis that looks very similar when it blooms but it is one of those short ones that I often overlook. Maybe with all this global warming I should try the Passionflower. When I see pictures like yours it makes me want to try.

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  2. I too like the Passionflower. Mine is growing abundantly this year. So many blooms. The funny little green fruit it makes -- we picked them when we were kids; called them apricots. They tasted awful!

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  3. When I was a kid and we picked cotton by hand and sometimes we would find something that looked very similar to this in the cotton field. The flowers were gone when cotton picking time came around but the vines often had produced some kind of fruit. Usually only one to two pods, for lack of a better description. And the fruit was, well, not something you would serve guests or even take to house. But it was sweet and gooey and fun to eat when the last thing you wanted to be doing was picking cotton and stuffing it in a sack.

    When I saw this, I looked it up on wiki. According to that site there's about 500 species of these flowering plants. So I'm wondering if this one produces fruit and if so, have you ever heard of anyone eating it except for bored little barefoot boys picking cotton?

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  4. David, I don't recall seeing any fruits on mine but I will keep a look out.

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  5. Nature never ceases to amaze. How she came up with something so interesting as that flower (I haven't seen them before) is beyond me.

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  6. Passion vines showed up in my South Carolina garden. Those flowers look like space aliens to me. :o)

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  7. Phillip, I've never grown that variety of passionflower, but I have some that grow along my deck. They were not profuse this year because the morning glories beat them out, but last year, Gulf Fritillaries frolicked all over it. It was like music in motion. I love the color of your passionflowers, and they are such a food for Fritillary caterpillars. Have a beautiful weekend.~~Dee

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  8. Wow, those blooms are amazing. I did grow them here a few years ago, and enjoyed a few of those gorgeous flowers. But for the next two years there wasn't a single bloom. I gave up, tried to tear it out, but it has other ideas. It keeps trying to sneak back into my garden! I just wish it would bloom.

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  9. Fantastic flower, great colors :) Regards

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  10. Phillip my passion flowers have large green oval seed pods about the size of a large egg. The seeds inside are gooey.

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