Growing the ‘Lavender Lady’ Passion Flower vines in the Northeast Florida Landscape
Origins of ‘Lavender Lady’ Passion Flower Vine:
The Passiflora genus is considered pan-tropical, it is distributed among the tropical regions of the planet and consists of more than 500 species with most found in South America, eastern Asia, southern Asia, and New Guinea and some found in our very own SE United States like our native passiflora incarnata. They are members of the family passifloraceae and may be a vine, shrub, or herbaceous plant.
‘Lavender Lady’ Passionflower vine is an interspecies cross between passiflora amethystina and passiflora caerulea.
Blooms and Fruit of ‘Lady Margaret’ Passion Flower Vine:
Beautiful and lightly fragrant 3-4 inch lavender blooms have 5 soft pinkish lavender sepals and 5 matching petals. Just above the petals a corolla with small straight filaments of bright purple adorn the center. Look at the patterning on the filaments, isnt it beautiful, every other one alternating around the whorl has a white blotch midcenter. 5 yellow stamens and three deep purple splotched stigmas adorn the center of the plant. A subtle beauty but a hardy vine selectin here in Northeast Florida. The lavender colored flowers are a major attraction of butterflies and other pollinators to the garden. Blooms late summer to fall here in our NE Florida, Jacksonville / St. Augustine area gardens.
Lavender Lady is a pollen sterile cultivar so not a good candidate for use as a pollinator for other passionflowers.
Foliage and Mature Size of the ‘Lavender Lady’ Passion Flower Vine in NE Florida Landscapes:
A very deep green passion flower vine with smaller deeply lobed trilobed leaves of fairly even proportions. The vines on Lavender Lady will grow quickly in the summer months and can reach grow quickly during summer months and can reach 10-30 ft long so give them a good supporting structure to climb and remember to train your vines sideways along the fence or trellis ( they will go up all on their own) Expect the foliage to drop in the winter time. If winter temperatures drop below 32 you will get some vine damage but the plant will regrow from its root system if the vines are completely damaged in zone 8b or 9a. You can also protect the lower vines by piling mulch, leaf debri, straw or pine straw up around them in the winter time to help insulate them a bit!
Exposure for ‘Lavender Lady’ Passion Flower Vine in NE Florida Landscapes:
Plant these pollinator attracting flowers in full sun or partial shade. Morning shade with all afternoon sun, or morning sun and afternoon shade also work well her in NE Florida.
Soil Preference for ‘Lavender Lady’ Passion Flower Vine in NE Florida Landscapes:
Passion flowers are tolerant of a wide range of soils and conditions and components and are right at home in Floridas sandy soils provided they are well drained. While passion flowers like moist soils they don’t like to sit in water for prolonged periods during the rain season.
Want to see more Passionflower vines for NE Florida landscapes? Links below!
Blue Passion Flower Vine / Passiflora caerulea
Passion Flower Giant Grandilla
Passion Flower Maypop / incarnata