There’s a patch of white passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) in my garden that consistently blooms pure white blossoms. The ‘pops’ also look a little different, with a rounder shape than the usual egg-shaped pods. The other passionflowers around our place all bloom the usual purple. For a while, I thought it was just because they’re in more shade than the other vines that grow in our yard and on our land.

Passiflora incarnata ‘alba’ | White Passionflower

I think this patch of all-white flowers are the sub-species, or variant ‘alba’, or maybe adding the ‘alba’ simply means that this one produces white flowers. I haven’t seen anything in my research to tell for sure. The naming of plants beyond the binomial is confusing to me.

Anyway, I’ve transplanted one I dug to a pot to move into a different location to see if it also continues to bloom white. If it does, then I am going to assume this is what it is, and I’ll begin propagating more of them to offer in my catalog for my Wild Ozark nursery.

Experiment results to test for environmental influences

UPDATE 8/4/24: The white transplant is still in a pot but in a different location where it is getting more sun. This year, it bloomed, and it is WHITE 🙂 So, at least location isn’t the influence. I’ll put it in the ground so it can come back next year and see if it still blooms white, and that should be a definitive answer.

Pre-Order

I’ll link to the nursery catalog, but right now aren’t any to offer in my nursery. I need to propagate more plants. If you’d like to be added to a list, I’ll let you know when I have some ready to go. They’ll be in pots for local pickup, or I can ship them bare-root in fall.

Passiflora Incarnata Seeds

Trying to grow a white one from seeds is likely a gamble. Most of the flowers in our area are purple, and are likely cross pollinated. Seeds are notoriously low and slow germinators. I’ve heard that simulating a wildfire over your planted seeds may help. Or, soaking 24-48 hours in warm water may help.

Because these are wild-growing, you might get a white or a purple from seed pods of the white vine. But if you’d like to order a ‘pop’ or a seedpod, email me and I’ll ship those out after they’re dried. The pops from white vines are $10 plus shipping each. Pops from purple flowering vines are $5 plus shipping each. Ships to US addresses only, no plant/seed shipments to California.

Maypops

We always called them maypops where I grew up in Louisiana. I guess that moniker came from the popping sound the seedpods make when you step on them. But they don’t bloom here so early, let alone make the seedpods so early, so ‘maypop’ doesn’t seem such a fitting name anymore.

Here, the flowers begin to bloom somewhere around July or June, and the pods come on near the end of July.

Medicinal Native Herbs

One of my passions is identifying and using native medicinal plants. Our white passionflowers probably have the same traditional uses as the purple ones.