Description
Passionflowers are the most architecturally strange flowers most gardens ever carry, and Inspiration pushes that as far as a hardy vine goes: deep purple, fragrant blooms larger than Incense’s own, carried right through summer and into fall.
It is a tetraploid seedling of Passiflora Incense, a long-loved hybrid, raised in Germany by Roland Fischer and selected for better flowers than its parent. It flowers more freely and sets fruit more readily. The trade-off is modest: vigour is a little lower, so it does best planted in the ground with something to climb rather than confined to a pot.
Overview
- Deep purple, fragrant flowers, larger than Incense’s.
- A tetraploid seedling of the classic Incense.
- Climbs 10 to 15 ft, flowering summer into fall.
- Hardy to Zone 7, unusual for a bloom this size.
Growing Details
Latin Name: Passiflora ‘Inspiration’
Site and Soil: Full sun to part shade; light, well drained soil of moderate fertility
Hardiness: Hardy to USDA Zone 7
Rootstock: Grown from cuttings
Bearing Age: Flowers in its first or second season, on the current year’s growth
Size at Maturity: Climbing vine, 10 to 15 ft with support
Ripening Time: Flowers through summer into fall
Pollination: Grown for its flowers; a second passionflower improves any fruit set
Pests & Diseases: Few problems; the foliage feeds fritillary butterfly caterpillars
Additional Notes
- Grower’s Insight: Give it the ground rather than a pot. Vigour is the one place this selection gave something up, and a container compounds it.
- Regional Insight: In colder gardens the vine dies back to the crown and returns from the root in spring, so a deep winter mulch matters more than anything else you do for it.
- Explore more passionflower vines in our collection: Passionflower Vines
