I have a beautiful passionflower. It is growing fantastically in a pot on my deck. Right now it is starting to bear fruit. I was wondering if the fruit is edible and if so, when do you know when it is ready to eat? Your response would be greatly appreciated.
The most common type of passion flower that bears edible fruit is Passiflora edulis. It has a white and purple bloom and the mature fruits are dark purple and egg shaped.
The funny thing about passion fruit is that it will not ripen off the vine, so you have to wait until the fruit drops.
During a trip to California I interviewed passiflora enthusiast Patrick Worley, and this is what he had to say about harvesting the fruit.
“All passion fruit must fall before they are picked to be sure they are ripe and some have to wrinkle, but as they winkle they become sweeter. One marketing scheme in Australia and New Zealand, they started calling it wrinkle fruit and packing them like eggs so that people would get used to the idea that they have to be wrinkled to taste their sweetest.”
Now without seeing your plant, I cannot recommend eating any part of it. To be on the safe side double-check that your vine is indeed a passion flower before sitting down to a mid-afternoon snack of its fruit.