Bren, sorry to have taken so long, but I've gone through all my seeds and found no double yellow or purple Angel trumpet. Hope someoe will have some to swap with you. cora

This has already been a great learning experience on this message board. Thank you..! We bought a Caerulea variety from a Home Depot two years ago. It made it through the summer last year and grew heartily into a large thick vine that covers a 14' portion of a 6' tall wall in our yard. It's on the East side of a N/S cement block wall. Thus, being Phoenix AZ... doesn't get the direct sunshine late in the day, but does get the heat through the block wall. It's not seeming to bother it at all. Regarding flowers, however... we only had three last year and each one only opened fully for about a 24 hour period. The second day they would open half-way and then died off slowly in about a week's time. I didn't get any fruit last year. I did no trimming over the winter. But this spring, I trimmed back the new growth to maintain the vine to it's current size. The vine has developed tons of flower buds and about eight of them have opened up so far. They still only open up fully for about a 24 hour period. We have few bees here as well so I'll be hand pollinating. But is it common for the flowers to only be open for about a day or so? Thank you in advance for your assistance and wisdom. Michael and Linda Kavanaugh "kavalinda"

Two clones means that they need to have originated from two separate seeds, and therefore they are genetically distinct. A lot of varieties are passed around for years by rooting cuttings. It might not even be obvious that two plants coming from different companies/nurseries are in fact the same clone--you have to be careful. For some species I understand there are actually a very small number of clones in general ciruculation. I think I heard this is the case for coccinea and vitifolia, for example. Each passion flower has both male and female organs, so that's not a concern, although there may be instances of clones that do not produce viable pollen or fruit. This is common for hybrids--I'm not sure about species. As far as how this works, I don't know the details, but i assume it is somewhat analogous to an immunological response in animals, whereby self vs. non-self is recognized. If the pollen is from the same clone, the plant must have mechanisms that recognize this and prevent pollination. I don't know offhand what those are. So if you need two to make fruit, once you have the appropriate plants, you need to have the correct pollinator, which can be a bee, bird, bat, etc. To be honest, I don't have a clue how this works for each individual species--perhaps someone here knows for the ones you mention. I do seem to recall that for the bee pollinated ones, often the bigger the bee the better (e.g. Carpenter bees)--they are more likely to brush up against the reproductive organs. Sometimes the situation can be very specific. For example, the rare and possibly extinct P. parritae is thought to have gone through a big drop in population when its only pollinator (a hummingbird) moved to higher altitude due to the effect of global warming. In California we have non-native Argentine ants. They are also extremely common. I've been told that some of the Tacsonias in Strybing Arboretum in San Francisco are pollinated by ants as you suggest (their normal pollinators are generally humingbirds, I think larger than our species). If you need to cross pollinate to get fruit, there should be no difference (perhaps tiny?) no matter the source of the pollen. Of course if you want to grow new plants from seed, this does become important. I believe P. coccinea (miniata) x vitifolia and P. quadrangularis x alata hybrids are very common.

Karyn, if your flavicarpa is grown from seed, then you never know when, or even if, it will bloom. Seedlings may take up to 2 or 3 years. Ninecrow, the fruit set will depend on the pollen parent, as flavicarpa is self-incompatible. What did you use? Same question for abdielg.