Ladies and gentlemen, it is a glorious day in Delray-les-Plages.
I planted this Blue Eye Susan passionflower vine about 3 weeks ago. It has climbed a good 4 feet since it arrived. It bloomed a few hours ago. When I checked it out just after sunrise today, the bud was about the size of my thumb (maybe a bit shorter). Then suddenly, VOILĄ! it's open. We are very excited.
Take care, all.
Sylvain.
Blue Eyed Susan is my favorite! Big dark purple flowers with lots of contorted filaments. Here's a pic from last summer. Should have the first blooms from this summer in a couple of weeks.
Mark
Like I was saying, this is a newly established vine. We have had 4 blooms in the last 3 days. Two seem ready to open today. Are these things spring-loaded? One minute you go by and there's just a bit of purple showing between the still-folded sepals and a bit later, your flower is fully open. I have got to watch one open. One of these days, I will install my camera near a bud and have it take pictures every minute to capture the opening on file.
Then, I could print them all out and make a flip book. We used to do that on rainy days when I was a kid: make a whole lot of simple drawings on construction paper, bind the whole thing with a bulldog clip and animate them in a flip book. Don't tell kids today about making flip books if you don't want them to have you committed. My friend's grandkid threw a tantrum at Christmas because he wanted a flat screen TV for his room and all he got was a 46-incher. Apparently, you're just a blob of unattractiveness if you own anything smaller than a 56-incher. The poor kid is missing 10 inches! Oh, the shame of it. Now his friends are making fun of his minuscule TV. O tempo, O mores.
Gotta go.
Sylvain.
well passion plant come back every year.
I had the first bloom on my Blue Eyed Susan on Friday! Here's a pic:
Mark
Congratulations. Yesterday, there were 9 blooms open on our vine. There are butterflies all over the trellis and there are a great number of gulf fritillaries (sp?) caterpillars munching on the leaves. Aren't passion flower vines great?
Sylvain.
What's the chance of a newbie to passies getting a couple of different cuttings to try to grow? I just love the blue or purple ones. They really are breath taking. If you have some extra cuttings in the near future please dmail me.
Thanks in advance,
Marian
My dear Marian.
If I had cuttings, I would gladly send you some. However, when all those passion flowers started blooming, they attracted gulf fritillary butterflies by the dozen. They laid eggs and their caterpillars ate up the vine in 2 days, leaving nothing but the stems. My friends tell me it will return. If it does, it will be a miracle. I consider that I don't have that passionflower vine anymore.
Sorry about that.
Sylvain.
Sylvain,
It will come back. Just check the vine every day, and squash any gulf frit eggs you see or they will munch the new growth. The eggs are tiny yellow things when first laid. They change color to orangish, then black before hatching. You could also take a cutting or two, but cuttings do best when there is a small leaf. I took a couple of cuttings of my BES last winter in case it froze, and they took almost a month to root, but they eventually did. Good luck!
Mark
This message was edited Aug 18, 2009 11:04 AM
The carnage happened around the middle of May: 3 months ago. I have yet to see a leaf trying to open on the trellis. There are no eggs, no more butterflies, no more purple passionflowers; only a sad-looking trellis with the remains of a passionflower vine. The remains are green but I wouldn't say they're interesting.
Sylvain.
Oh my goodness I feel your pain Sylvain! I just hate it when I have to look at a trellis, arbor, or something and it's so sad looking. I have a couple of clematis that look pretty bad too. Then I have a waterlily in a big round tub and something is munching all the leaves off it too. I may also have a VICTORIA water plant in the tub. I need to take them out and put them down in the pond with the catfish and so forth in it. I just don't know how I'd do that without the fish eatting them or pulling the roots up.
I'm with the rest of them. I bet your plant will come back and be just as pretty as ever.
Marian
Sylvain,
Possibly you had some remaining baby catepillars that quickly ate any new growth? It doesn't sound good that there hasn't been any new growth in 3 months. But if they are planted in the ground and still green, I'd remain optimistic. Maybe a little fertilizer might jump start them. I grow some incarnata plants just for the gulf frits, but check most of my other passies daily for eggs and catepillars. I even use a small mirror to check under the leaves of any young plants. Despite this, I just had the growing tip munched off on a subrotunda plant I am growing from seed. It is amazing how quickly the gulf frit cats can grow--last summer I came back home from a weeks vacation to find numerous large gulf frit cats on my vines--and those were the ones that I checked before leaving on vacation.
Good luck!
Mark
I've been putting bird netting over some of my passi's that I didn't want the Gulf Frits on. They ( the Gulf Frits) are pretty big eaters and will use any passionflower, where the Zebra Longwings and Julia's are a bit picker. Here the Zebra's seem to like the maypops best. They will eat other passi's when I raise them and bring different passi leaves in to feed them. I even resorted to building a small bird net "tent" over one of my outside plant benches to keep them off my smaller potted passi's.
I didn't realize how good it was here in Oklahoma, last week I was bemoaning the fact that we poor Okies suffered without the visual stimulii of things like Gulfcoast frittalaries. Glad I didn't move.
LOL Poetinwood!
Ahhhh, but to have the Zebra Longwings, Julia's, Giant yellow swallowtails, Pipevine, Polydamas, Palmedes (sp?), Eastern Black Swallowtail, and at least 2 dozen other species of Butterflies, and living on the edge of 3500 acres of wildlife management area, I can't think of a place I'd rather be.
I have a Blue Eyed Susan but I don't recall it getting that blue
You're enjoying this, aren't you mjsponies?
Hummerers and flutterers by the gazillions! you left that out. You know why Cubans like Miami so much? Cause it's so close to the U.S.
Ha!
Thomas
Just never could find a way to move to Florida or I'd be there. Grew up in Savannah as a small boy. I miss the Flora and fauna.
I think she does enjoy torturing us a bit...LOL
Moi ????? Well, I haven't been able to tease anybody since the Chocolate Basil thread....but yes, I love it here, am most definitely a warm weather gal. Anything below 70 to me is COLD !
Here's the "Lady Margaret with Gulf Frit"
