Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Passiflora caerulea
Common name
Blue Passionflower, Blue Passionfruit
Family
Passifloraceae
Where found
Occasionally naturalised. Coastal north from Tuross Head. Sydney area away from the coast. Occasionally elsewhere. Doubtfully naturalised in the ACT.
Notes
Introduced slender hairless climber with stems to many metres long, sometimes woody. Suckers freely. When grown as a rootstock for other cultivated species of passionfruit, it often sprouts from below the graft. Fruit fleshy. Leaves alternating up the stems, 6–12 cm long, 60-120 mm wide, usually 5- or 7-lobed, occasionally unlobed on young plants, sometimes glaucous, the lobe tips pointed or blunt; margins entire. Usually with 2–6 stalked glands near the middle of the leaf stalks. Stipules leafy, 10–20 mm long, more or less kidney shaped, attached on the side. Flowers greenish white to pale pink, the coloured ring at the base of the petals bluish or purplish, flower centre yellowish to cream or greenish. Flowers 60–100 mm in diameter, with 5 petals and 5 coloured sepals, single. Fruit yellow to orange, almost round to oval or oval, about 6 cm long, hairless.
General Biosecurity Duty all NSW.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Passiflora~caerulea (accessed 25 January, 2021)
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