Rewilding My Lot

Yesterday I wrote about my Scarletfruit Passionflower (Passiflora lanuginosa) since it has now started blooming for the first time.

One of the new things I’ve learned about this plant is that the blooms, which are plentiful, are each only open for a day. After the previous post, there was rain that evening which knocked away a couple of spent blooms. That allowed me to take some more detailed photographs that illustrate the lifecycle of a Passionflower bloom.

First there are young buds. On this branch, the youngest ones are the smaller ones in the distance near the growing point of the branch.

This is a bud that was open the next day.

Blooms open overnight and by the time it is dawn the flowers are fully open.

By mid morning the bloom is already beginning to curl up and the process is complete by early afternoon. The following three photos illustrate this.

While the flower was open, if it was pollinated, then it starts to form a fruit.

If the flower was not pollinated, then it falls off the plant and all that is left is the empty cage that previously contained it.

In the picture below from left to right there are: empty bloom cage, developing fruit, empty bloom cage, newly closed bloom, open bloom, and bud almost ready to open.