Passiflora phoenicea x caerulea?

last august a friend shared a fruit from his passiflora phoenicea ruby glow which he pollinated with caerulea.  the fruit was relatively large and enjoyable.  i liked it a lot better than the few edulis that i’ve tried.  they are a bit too sour but great on top of vanilla ice cream. 

i was extra motivated to sow the ruby glow seeds because i was very curious what the hybrid would be like.  passiflora caerulea comes up on its own here so often that when i was growing up that i assumed it was a native.  it’s actually from south america.  sadly the fruit is virtually flavorless.

on 11 august i sowed around a dozen ruby glow seeds.  only 2 seeds germinated and shortly afterwards, 1 of the seedlings was entirely eaten by a slug. 

i should mention that the seedlings were in different pots in different locations.  if they had been in the same pot in the wrong location, then the slug would have eaten both seedlings.  this is why the #1 plant rule is to hedge your bets… don’t keep all your eggs in 1 basket.  since i do sow lots of seeds, in order to avoid running out of space, i put different seeds in the same pot.  for example, i put the passionfruit seeds in 11 different pots with the following seeds…

Aeonium Mardi Gras
Aloe bakeri hybrids
Anthurium coriaceum
Calamansi variegated
Dragon fruit sweet red
Epiphyllum red long big fruit
Eulophia speciosa
Hoya papaschonii
Ficus NOID fuzzy juicy
Ficus Panache
Ficus religiosa
Gasteria NOID blooming w aloes
Guava banana
Guava strawberry
Kalanchoe Lynn’s variegated
Mangave Freckles and Speckles
Miracle fruit
Spanish lime

most of the pots were indoors in zip lock bags by a big window or under a grow light.  for some reason the passionfruit seeds only germinated in the outdoor pots.

here was the surviving seedling on 9 december…

i wasn’t sure if or when the leaves would lobe.  the seedling continued to grow throughout the winter… which still hasn’t ended.  recently the leaves started to lobe, so that seems to confirm that the seedling is indeed a hybrid. 

its location wasn’t the best for a vine so a couple days ago i put it in a 5 gallon pot and gave it a pole to climb…

it seems like quite a few caerulea crosses have been made.  the fruit is either hollow or “foul”.  are there any exceptions?  my expectations are low.

i didn’t manage to find the exact cross, the closest i found was passiflora alata x caerulea which was named angel of sierre.  no mention of the fruit.  are most passiflora crosses made for flowers?

when i was a kid my favorite thing about passiflora caerulea was that it hosted the gulf fritillary butterfly.  the orange and black spiky caterpillars were fascinating.  perhaps i wouldn’t have liked the butterfly so much if caerulea’s fruit had been delicious.  i’m guessing that no passiflora crosses are made for butterflies?

let’s consider some possibilities of my phoenicea x caerulea…

a. delicious fruit, wonderful host (of gulf fritillary)
b. foul fruit, wonderful host
c. delicious fruit, terrible host
d. foul fruit, terrible host

even in the case of outcome “d” the hybrid wouldn’t be entirely useless because the flowers are probably going to be decent.

the last question i have about this hybrid is whether it will produce new shoots from its roots like caerulea often does.

oh yeah, sorry not sorry if you were expecting to see the fruit.  i know that i always like it when, for example, grafters include the results in the same video.  in this case though i guess that i wanted to hear some predictions.  perhaps it might be a year or two before the hybrid reaches maturity.  the suspense probably won’t kills us.