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PASSIONFLOWERS

Hello and welcome to my homepage. It has taken me a long time, but finally I've managed to put my website on the server (That ‚‘d already paid for anyway...).
First of all it seemed to me, that to bring a Passionflower to bloom, was a difficult thing. But it seems a lot harder for me to get a page about them running.

Well anyway, I think it was worth waiting. Of course this is now „Version 1.1“ and it sure will be updated/changed a few times in future, but the beginning is made.

I first came in contact with Passifloraceae, when I was living in a flat with only one balkony as a place to create gardening-feeling. Of course after the first year it was bursting with pots and plants, I had out there during summer. So the space was going out rapidly.
The only way to cultivate any more plants, was to focus on climbing plants/vines. Passifloracea are literally predetermined for this cause. Because of their beautyfull flowers, and their rampantly growing habitat.

It started with the usual suspicous like P.caerulea, P.‘Amethyst‘ and P.‘Jara'. All were growing wildly, producing loads of foliage. As then at the end of august 2001 the first flower of P.‘Jara‘ opened, that was it!
I started to get hold of any possibly available Passionflowers in the gardencenters around my hometown. But here in Switzerland usually the offer of different plants is very limited. Also there's a lot of plants being sold with wrong names, and a lot of not very nice looking stuff. I call them cheap hybrids. So I was automatically forced to start surfing the internet for getting contact to other passiflora-enthusiasts. That was the moment I first noticed, how many different sorts there was! From many friendly people, particularly from Germany, I received a lot of information about this beatuyful plant. I even got boxes full of cutting material from their annual cuttingsessions in spring or autumn. In the beginning I managed with a lot of effort to raise them to young plants, and in the end through my growing experience, it was starting to get all easier to raise them (As you have to know, Switzerlands an island in the middle of europe, and it is very difficult to get alive plants with soil to cross the border).

Even from Botanical Gardens parcels full of cuttings reached me. From my colleageu Mauro Peixoto in Brazil I also got loads of different seeds form brazilian passifloras, that he collected himself in the woods.

So bit by bit, I managed to get a reasonable collection together. At the moment I got over 100 different sort of Passiflora, of which 80 are real nature-forms, and only 20 hybrids/crossings (see the actual collection MY COLLECTION). So you can see, that my real passion is to raise rare species that are even partially threatened by extinction in their natural habitat.
Of course theirs also loads of beatyfull hybrids, like the classic ones( x bellotii,x allardi,‘Amethyst‘ and such).

Also I would like to motivate people to cultivate passionflowers, who don't have the possibility to overwinter them in a greenhouse.
In my first year I managed to successfully overwinter over 50 plants in a room with only 3 windows, and with artificial light. With only 3 species dying that winter, I think I can call it a success. Also the cultivation of passionflowers is much more easier than a lot of people think it is.

All my impressions and all my advice on this homepage is based on experience I made myself and don't claim scientific correctness.

Of course I'm also interessted in other special plants, and I will try to integrate them into my homepage bit by bit in the future.

So have fun on my site, and appreciate any suggestion.

© by Stefan Rhyner

All photos and texts are property of Stefan Rhyner and may not be used without permission.