‘Giant Granadilla’ in Florida

In appreciation of the broad and diverse Passifloraceae family we would like to dive into the world of the often confused Giant Granadilla and some of its relatives. In our experience the Giant Granadilla that is also known as Badea, Barbadine or Granadilla Gigante cannot be currently found in the nursery trade in Florida, perhaps seeds are available online but we have not tested if those available are truly Giant Granadilla. More often than not it seems that the plant that is traded by the name Giant Granadilla is not quite the true giant passionfruit described with the scientific name Passiflora quadrangularis which is the largest of the passion fruits with quadrangular fruits as long as 30cm (approx. 1 ft).

There are two other species and one hybrid that are sometimes referred to as Giant Granadilla and we have found them to be around the nursery trade quite often. The two species are: Passiflora alata and Passiflora phoenicea, and the hybrid is Passiflora ×decaisneana (P. alata × P. quadrangularis). These species and hybrid specimens have different traits, growing requirements and most importantly different fruits than P. quadrangularis. In Central and South Florida Passiflora ×decaisneana is what we mostly find labeled as Giant Granadilla, Giant Passionfruit, Granadilla or sometimes even P. quadrangularis.

On the other hand, it is worth mentioning a fruit that is commonly found in cultivation in Central and South America that is known by the name Granadilla, and described scientifically as Passiflora ligularis. It is a highly sought after fruit for its aroma, sweetness and flavor. This particular Passiflora is not generally confused with the ones mentioned above, although we have encountered a few people thinking that this is what they are getting when buying something labeled Granadilla in Florida. P. ligularis requires higher altitudes and cooler temperatures to grow properly and set flowers and fruit. Its flowers are very distinct from the other specimens as they do not have red petals and/or sepals and the stems are distinctly rounded. To clarify, Granadilla is the name given to many of the fruits produced by passionvines in the Spanish language and Latin American countries. It very likely stems from colonial times as Spaniards must have identified the passionfruits as similar to what they knew by the name ‘Granada’ or pomegranate. Granadilla is a diminutive of Granada, a fruit containing multiple seeds covered with a gel-like pulp.

Some of the images you will see below are published in the book Passiflora, Passionflowers of the World by Torsten Ulmer and John M. MacDougal with drawings by Bettina Ulmer, other pictures were taken by ourselves in Costa Rica and Florida and some others were sourced online. There is a post on https://www.passionflow.co.uk/ which highlights some identification traits for most of the specimens in question, although in my opinion, the information portrayed in this blog article is not sufficient to clearly identify the plants. Therefore, I will summarize the identification traits from the Passiflora, Passionflowers of the World book for each of the species next to their according images below.

It is important to mention that the authors of Passiflora, Passionflowers of the World themselves describe the misnomer of Giant Granadilla both under the titles and descriptions of P. alata (page 278, 2004) and P. quadrangularis (page 310 , 2004). They explain that John Vanderplank in a book called Passion Flowers, whose second edition was published in 1996 had already pointed out that most plants cultivated under the name P. quadrangularis in Europe are actually specimens of P. ×decaisneana a hybrid between P. alata and P. quadrangularis. In-spite of this, it seems that to this day the error has not been corrected by growers in Florida, as we are still seeing hybrids labeled Giant Granadilla which are not P. quadrangularis. Furthermore, the authors emphasize that the main strategy to differentiate between specimens to properly identify P. quadrangularis, is observing the flowers. The authors argue that classification by number of petiolar nectar glands on the petioles can lead to false identification.