#passiflora

Passion Flower. Temple of Flora. 1812. Robert John Thornton.

mavis x terzo (oc x canon) animation rough. 🖤

Giant granadilla (Passiflora quadrangularis) illustrated by Peter Charles Henderson for Temple of Flora (1807) by Robert John Thornton.

1) Native Passionflowers

Did you know North America has edible passion fruit that is cold hardy below 32°, has large, beautiful and fragrant flowers, spreads through runners underground, and is a host plant to 3+ native butterflies? :D

The species name is Passiflora Incarnata, and the most common, common name is Maypop(s)!

[ID: A photo of a Passiflora Incarnata blossom, which has large white petals in the background, wavy purple filaments that are magenta towards the center, with yellow and green structures in the center for releasing and receiving pollen. Obscured by the pollen structure, there is a large bee drinking nectar from the center of the flower. End ID]

2) Native Bamboo

Did you know that there's a whole genus of Bamboo native to North America which is endangered (but not Officially ™, because red tape) that grows from Florida, up to Massachusetts, out to Texas and Oklahoma? And it used to cover miles and miles of land as habitat for bison and passenger pigeons before the British colonization?

If you live in South Carolina and you've ever seen bamboo or reeds along the side of the road in the forest, you're most likely looking at a rare endangered species all around you you didn't know about ! :D

They spread through rhizomes, and flowering is, depending on the species, either a *once in a lifetime event so extremely rare there's barely any documentation of it* where the *entire plant dies afterwards* (so, an entire huge grove that is a mile across could flower once after decades, and then die!) or.... They can flower multiple times a year for multiple years in a row without dying, and be completely unheard of until it gets documented consistently online :D

The genus is called Arundinaria, and as of March 2026, there's *currently* 4 species:

Arundinaria Giagantea, (River Cane),

Arundinaria Tecta (Switch Cane),

Arundinaria Applachiana (Hill Cane)

Arundinaria Alabamensis (Tallappoosa Cane).

If you find out you've had this plant growing wild on your property, they are very easy to propagate from rhizome cuttings!

[ID: A photo of a plant pot that has a small Arundinaria plant in it, with a dozen or more, very thin, tall stems coming out of the center, each topped with bright green bamboo leaves slightly yellow on the edges from the cold. End ID]

This is also the time of year that some species are flowering, so if you've got it nearby, go hunting for little grass flowers! Sometimes they're green, sometimes they're purple-- its nice when they're purple since they stand out more to the eye!

[ID: A photo of Arundinaria flowers with a hand held behind them for scale. The flowers look like typical grain flowers, and are purple, with a few hanging green pollen tassels. End ID].

Bonus!

If you grow tomatoes and peppers, you should consider growing eggplant (even if you don't like to cook with eggplant yourself, you can gift it to friends and neighbors :D ) or, for a more ornamental option (IF and only if you don't have small children or pets that could get into them -- ) Brugmansia flowers, so you can transfer any hornworms that show up on your peppers and tomatoes onto the eggplant or Brugmansia leaves instead!

They're all in the Solanaceae family, so the hornworm caterpillars can eat all of their leaves, but eggplant and Brugmansia have much, much bigger leaves so they can more easily feed the caterpillars without stripping the plant bare --

-- you get to watch some cool native caterpillars in action as they grow exponentially in size over what feels like overnight, which helps native pollinators who are losing out on their native wild solanums due to deforestation, without having to worry when your food plants get defoliated !

You can look up the Five-Spotted Hawkmoth to see some really neat pictures of their adult forms :) the scientific name is the extremely long Manduca Quinquemaculata, which I have only spelled correctly via the wonders of copy-and-paste 😂

If you want to transform the way you garden completely, start growing host plants specifically for native "pest" pollinators like hornworms, and instead of being pissed off or panicking at the sight of a hornworm munching on your tomato plant, you'll get super excited!