Family: Passifloraceae

Status: still sold in nurseries as a food and ornamental plant.

Description:
A vine with large, thin-textured 3-lobed leaves with toothed edges, climbing by tendrils. Flowers are pink and large, long-tubular, flaring at the tip into numerous long narrow petals. Fruit is an oval-shaped, yellow leathery textured berry, containing numerous seeds in a pleasant tasting pulp.

Preferred habitat and impacts:
Found on forest edges and river banks, usually close to towns or gardens. Prefers moist soils and some shade.
Capable of smothering trees and shrubs and groundcovers with its rampant growth.

Dispersal:
Seed is spread by birds, or in dumped garden refuse. Dumping may also spread the plant vegetatively.

Look-alikes:
The black passionfruit (Passiflora edulis) has similar 3-lobed leaves with toothed edges and growth habit, but the flowers are white with blue markings, and fruits are the familiar black leathery globes full of seeds in a tasty pulp. Black passionfruit also commonly gets out of gardens into the bush, with the assistance of birds and campers.
Two other weedy passionfruit species occur in the Illawarra, blue passionflower (Passiflora caerulea) and white passionflower (Passiflora subpeltata). Blue passionflower has large 5-lobed leaves with non-toothed edges, which may be blue-green, white flowers and a yellow to orange fruit. It is commonly used as the rootstock for grafted passionfruit varieties, and may sprout from below the graft. White passionflower has 3-lobed leaves with a whitish bloom on the underside and non-toothed edges, white flowers and green inedible fruits. Both these species have a conspicuous pair of stipules at the point where the leaf stalk arises from the stem. These are leafy looking structures. A tendril also arises from the stem opposite each leaf.
There are two native passionfruit vines on the south coast. Passiflora cinnabarina is a small plant, often growing on rocky outcrops, which has red flowers and leaves which are only shallowly 3-lobed and non-toothed. Passiflora herbertiana is a larger plant with similar shallowly lobed, non-toothed leaves which are often velvety-hairy. Flowers are yellow to orange and fruits are about 5cm long and green with paler spots. It only occurs north from Narooma.

Control:
Hand-pull or dig young plants, scrape and paint old stems. Spray with selective or non-selective herbicides.