PassionflowerPassiflora incarnata

Did you know?

• The name passionflower refers to the Passion of Christ. Christian missionaries in 1500s Latin America saw its symbols in the flower: the fringed corona as the crown of thorns, and the ten petals and sepals as the apostles^{[2, 3, 12]}.

• The name maypop comes from the hollow, egg-shaped fruits, which pop loudly when crushed^{[2, 3]}.

• The passionflower genus is large, with more than 500 species^[4].

• Maypop is Tennessee's state wildflower. The state's schoolchildren chose it in a 1919 vote, and it was named the state wildflower in 1973. Its Native American name, ocoee, was also given to the Ocoee River^[12].

• Maypop is a caterpillar food plant for three butterflies: the Gulf fritillary, the variegated fritillary and the zebra longwing^{[2, 3, 6]}.

• The fruit known as passion fruit comes from a South American relative, Passiflora edulis, native from Brazil to northeastern Argentina^[7].

Origins and history

Maypop is a fast-growing perennial vine that climbs with tendrils and can reach 25 feet; where winters are cold it dies back to the ground and grows again in spring^{[2, 3, 4]}. Its leaves have three lobes, and its intricate flowers, up to 3 inches across, have white or pale lavender petals and sepals and a crown of wavy, pink-to-purple filaments^{[2, 3]}. After flowering come the maypops themselves: egg-shaped fruits with an edible pulp^{[2, 3, 6]}. The vine grows wild across the southeastern and south-central United States and in Bermuda^{[1, 2, 3]}, on roadsides, prairies, pastures and woodland edges^[2]. Its other English names include apricot vine, wild apricot and purple passionflower^{[3, 5, 11, 12]}. Gardeners grow it for its flowers, its fruit and the butterflies it feeds^{[2, 3, 6]}.

Europeans first met passionflowers in Latin America in the 1500s^{[3, 5]}, and the missionaries' reading of the flower gave the whole genus its name, Passiflora^[3]. Carl Linnaeus named the North American maypop Passiflora incarnata in 1753^[1].

Native Americans had their own use for the plant, brewing its leaves into a calming tea^{[2, 3]}. Passionflower also became part of European folk tradition, and its dried aerial parts are still taken there as a calming tea^{[5, 8, 9]}. European herbal handbooks have recorded this use continuously since at least 1938, and European herbal regulators today list passionflower among traditional herbal preparations for relaxation^{[8, 9]}.

Traditional uses

Passionflower has been tested in a number of small clinical studies in people^{[5, 10]}, and European herbal regulators recognize its long tradition as a calming tea^{[8, 9]}.

• A calming tea

  Native Americans brewed the leaves into a calming tea, and European tradition uses the dried aerial parts in the same way. Passionflower helps you relax.*^{[2, 3, 5, 9]}

• A calm, balanced mood

  Passionflower supports a calm, balanced mood.*^{[5, 10]}

• A wild fruit

  Across its native range, ripe maypops are eaten fresh from the vine or cooked into jelly.^{[2, 3]}

Plant compounds

The aerial parts of passionflower contain flavonoids, mainly C-glycosides of apigenin and luteolin, such as vitexin, isovitexin and isoorientin^{[8, 10]}. They also contain traces of beta-carboline alkaloids, such as harman, and a cyanogenic glycoside, gynocardin^{[3, 8, 10]}.