Passiflora tripartita var. mollissima Seeds | Banana Passionfruit
LATIN NAME: Passiflora tripartita var. Mollissima
COMMON NAME: Banana Passionfruit
Plant Profile
Banana passionfruit is a vigorous vine of the high Andes with three-lobed leaves, pink flowers that hang on a long tube, and fruit that is oblong, orange and up to twelve centimetres long. The fruit is eaten in Colombia under the name curuba, and it tastes of a mixture of passionfruit and cucumber.
It grows between two thousand and three thousand five hundred metres in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, on slopes that are cool at night and never hot by day. That makes it one of the few passionfruits for a cool climate, and it is grown in the highlands of Kenya and of New Zealand for the same reason.
Science & Biotechnology
The flower is built for hummingbirds. The tube is ten centimetres long, the nectar sits at the bottom, and only a bird with a long curved bill can reach it while brushing the anthers and the stigma. That is why the plant sets fruit poorly where hummingbirds are absent and why hand pollination is routine in commercial orchards.
In New Zealand the vine is a serious weed of forest margins and of riverbanks, where it smothers native shrubs and its seed is spread by possums and by birds. It is listed as a noxious plant in several regions there, and it is a reminder that a plant can be a crop in one country and a pest in another without any change in its biology.
Uses & Benefits
The fruit is eaten fresh, made into juice, sorbet and a milk dessert, and in Colombia it is one of the fruits used in the traditional postre de natas. The pulp is aromatic and slightly acid, and it is usually strained because the seed is hard and bitter.
The plant is grown as an ornamental for its hanging pink flowers, which appear through the summer on a strong trellis. In its native range the fruit is sold in village markets rather than in export, since it bruises and does not travel. The leaves are not eaten and the root is not used. The seed is also pressed for an oil used in cosmetics in Colombia, and the residue is fed to pigs.
Growing from Seed
Sow fresh seed in a warm, moist mix at twenty degrees, and germination takes two to four weeks. The seed loses viability quickly, so use it in the season it is collected. Cuttings of half-ripe wood also root in summer and give fruit a year earlier.
Plant out against a strong trellis in sun, in soil that drains, and protect the plant from wind, which tears the leaves. It tolerates light frost once established but the growing tips are damaged at minus two. Prune in early spring to keep the vine within bounds, since it can cover a shed in a season.
Our Take
A cool-climate passionfruit with an excellent fruit and a bad reputation as a weed in New Zealand. Grow it on a strong frame and pick the fruit before it falls.
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