I’m sorry about the previous post being locked – it’s got a lot of information that’s not quite public domain yet.  But the general idea, I can give you….

 

Before Bill Wyatt passed in 2009, he and I had a talk about getting somebody to replicate his silk reel design.

 

These nice folks stepped up.  I met Roy and Henry at SOAR last October, and they agreed to give it a try.  We’re in the process of testing the prototype.

 

Yaay, silk!

We’ve had a beautiful weather year for the garden.  The moist spring turned into a warm but not parched summer, and our fall cold front came almost a month early, bringing lovely cooler nights and plenty of rain.  Because of the way our weather works in this part of Texas, it’s almost like we have two springs – everything gets a second wind, picks up, and rejuvenates.

Through the summer, I’ve had the occasional bloom on my “Temptation x Temptation” passionflower vine.  This is a cross originally made by Volker Sanders in Germany, although I got my plant from Passiflorista on Ebay (Jim Nevers).  During the hottest days, the flowers suffered horribly – they looked like they had been under a heat lamp, with wilted petals and limp coronas.  I will have to get a photo if it happens again – it was a real surprise the first time.  The other types do not have this problem.  Now, however, it’s putting out these luscious, plump flowers with the most amazing coloring.

When I have just one in my hand, the flower on “Temptation x Temptation” looks a lot like the “Incense” vine that it is adjacent to (and mingled with) – big, purple, curly flower.  But the color is really quite different.

“Incense” on the left, “Temptation x Temptation” on the right. If you look, you can see the different leaves, too – “Incense” has five-fingered leaves, and “Temptation x Temptation has three-fingered.

 

Very close to, the corona filaments look like something from under the sea – maybe a sea urchin…

 

Or a sea anemone.

From the side, there’s a lot of difference between the two flowers.  “Temptation x Temptation” is strongly reflexed – meaning that the petals pull back from the flower and arch downward, so looking from the top you see the corona floating in the air.  They’re also very robust and fleshy – this plant is a tetraploid hybrid, meaning that its parent plants were chemically treated during the hybridizing process to give it double the usual number of genes.  Tetraploids are famous for thick, hardy plants and big flowers. The anthers on this plant are often a little odd – here, they’re pointing upward at the sky, instead of downward at the theoretical bee that should be pollinating the plant.  They sometimes manage to rotate downward before the flower closes, but sometimes not.

In the side view, “Incense” is nearly flat.

 

A new addition – this one is “Blue-Eyed Susan,” with parentage similar to “Temptation x Temptation” and another hybrid, “Bucky” bred by Jim Nevers in Florida.  I’m hoping with these three tetraploid hybrids, I might be able to get some fruit.  “Bucky” in particular is known for good fruit. Because of the different chromosome number, tetraploid (4n) plants can’t set fruit with normal diploid (2n) pollen; they need 4n pollinators.

 

 

And this is “Blue Bouqet” – another hybrid, this one made by Richard McCain.  This game little plant just got out after traveling cross-country in a postal box; the whole plant isn’t much past a foot tall, but it’s bloomed already.  It’s supposed to be more blue, so we’ll see if that happens.  A lot of this kind of flower difference comes down to things like humidity, soil chemistry, hours  and intensity of sunshine, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have a very definite niche.  Many of the things that I do, not a lot of people do.  And, I document most of what I do – with lots of pictures, which I post online.  So, when people are searching the web for something related to my unusual interests, they often find my pictures.  Then, if I’m lucky and they’re polite, they write me and ask for permission to use the pictures.  I usually say yes, although it’s case by case; sometimes there’s even a little money involved, or a contributor’s copy of a cool book or magazine.  I’m particularly likely to say yes if it’s for a museum supporting science, or for educational materials for schools – the only exception is if it’s for a religious organization promoting pseudo-science.  I think that teaching creationism to kids is an insidious and very damaging form of child abuse.  Sorry about the soap-box, but it’s something I’ve run into hard a couple of times.  If you want to tell children that God made silkworms for the express use of mankind, I respect your Constitutional freedom to say so – but I also have a right to sue if you use my copyrighted pictures without permission.

 

 

This time, it was a writer with Scientific American’s website; he was looking for some images to support an article on metamorphosis.  So, now, I’ve got a photo on their website, with links back to mine – and it’s a very cool article!

The article with my photo

Another article, related information, same author. 

 

It’s been an exceptionally good season.  We had a warm, mild spring, followed by an unusually wet summer – so everything is green and lush!

I’ve been a fan of passionflowers for a long time. I have begun seriously collecting the hardy varieties, focusing on flowers and fruit.  Many of the new hybrids are cold-hardy for our Zone 8a garden, and the plants that I put in the ground last year and year before last, are really kicking in.

 

The biggest vine in the yard is Passiflora “Incense” – it is the first one I planted, and it has really thrived.  Sadly, it doesn’t make fruit – but it sets usually 30 to 50 of these flowers every day.  They’re usually between 3″ and 4″ across.

 

 

You can see how vigorous the vine is – it’s this solid across about fifteen feet of fence.

 

 

P. “Constance Elliott” is a color sport of P. caerulea; it is exceptionally hardy, and also has a sweet fragrance, especially in the evenings.  I love the water on the petals – it’s something that this species just does.  Except for the driest, hottest days, these flowers look like they’ve been freshly dew-kissed.  The buds actually drop water if you bump them.  Tennyson wrote in Maud, “There has fallen a splendid tear / From the passion-flower by the gate.” I like the idea of splendid tears.

 

 

This is P. caerulea, the species.  The plant is doing OK, but not as well as the Constance Elliott – I think that the location doesn’t allow it quite as much enriched soil to dig in to.  I’ve put alpaca manure on it, which has helped a lot.  Sadly, the fruit is fairly insipid – it tastes almost more like a vegetable than a fruit.

 

 

P. incarnata, the native species, is my favorite for fruit.  You can read here about foraging them on the freeway verge, and making jelly.

 

 

We had some surprise seedlings – I didn’t realize that Chris had re-used some peat pots I had (unsuccessfully) tried planting passionflower seeds in.  When he planted tomato seeds and put them on the heat mat, the heat caused the passionflower to germinate. These flowers are from the sprouts from this spring!  He made these bamboo and string trellises for them.  So far, haven’t gotten any fruit, but they’re working on it.

 

 

Along the lines of fruits and flowers – I’m also growing some new hybrids.  This is P. “Temptation X Temptation.”  It’s a tetraploid – which means that it has been manipulated to have double the number of genes.  This tends to yield very vigorous plants.  I’m hoping that they prove cold-hardy here; we’re on the edge of their zone tolerance.

 

 

This delicate and beautiful white flower is from P. “Bill’s Delight” – which I got by mail-order, and was doing really well until it just turned brown in the stem and died from the base upward.  I don’t know what got to it.  I’ll probably get another one this fall, and try it again; the flower is really lovely. There are other white P. incarnata sports that are supposed to have more fruit (this one has more flowers, fewer fruits) and I’ll probably try one of those as well.

Currently, in the yard I have: Passiflora incarnata, Passiflora “Incense,” Passiflora caerulea, Passiflora “Constance Elliott,” Passiflora belotii (=alatocaerulea), Passiflora lutea, Passiflora “Amethyst,” Passiflora “Bucky,” Passiflora “Temptation x Temptation,” Passiflora “Clear Sky,” and one hybrid that I’m not sure of the name, and I’m waiting for flowers to get help with an ID.

 

 

With passionflowers, we always get plenty of these – this is the chrysalis of a Gulf Fritillary, Agraulis vanillae.  Unfortunately, I have to use some organic insect spray against them to keep them from totally stripping the vines.  They can have any on the back of the fence, and I have the ones on the front of the fence.

 

 

Gulf Fritillary on the lantana.  This shot is from last fall, but we’ve had lots this summer as well.

 

 

This Giant Swallowtail, Papilio cresphontes, really loves the lantana.  It doesn’t sit still very well, though!  Every picture of it was blurred somewhere.

 

 

With all the rain, the basil is doing great, we’ve got lots of squash and tomatoes… but also lots of bermuda grass and weeds.  It’s just too hot to spend much time weeding.