A few years ago my husband came home from work and told me about a flower growing outside of my office building. He'd seen someone looking at it and stopped to find out what it was. It was our introduction to this native passionflower. Outside the building it just rambled over some azaleas and fought the good fight against the facilities folks who kept weeding and spraying it.
I brought in a few cuttings into my office to try to root. They never rooted but the flowers were really lovely. I had no success with cuttings during year 1 or 2. At the end of year 2, I dug up some small plants in the fall and put them in pots in my office window. The appeared to die back but I kept watering them anyway. The next spring, the plants arrived.
In 2018 I planted them in the yard along a new fence. The leaves come up late but a few made it. Since then the plant has been expanding it's kingdom on and beside the fence. It spreads pretty aggressively by the roots but I'm willing to give it some freedom. Why? The combination of adorable leaves and little yellow passionflowers are welcome to have a little space in the tiny garden. Plus, it's an important food for some butterflies.
Here's the vine in 2020. I gave it some strings to climb to get started but it only went to the middle horizontal bar.
The vine in 2021 after I added some netting to help it grow (a link to the net trellis. The clematis and sugar snaps work well on this net too).
Here is a close up of the leaves and the flower. The flower is about the size size as
a quarter.
The plant is now sufficiently established in the yard that I can put out the vines that pop up where I don't want them. I've also started digging up small plants (with a good length of root) to pot for friends. I've given out half a dozen or so. if anyone else would like one, please let me know!
My cutting is growing and getting some blooms. I identified a space along my fence where it will go this fall.