A neighbor’s passion vine

With warmer temperatures this summer, Passiflora incarnata seems to be thriving here in the Asheville basin.  Two of our neighbors have robust vines, with lots of flowers, as do others in the neighborhood.

It’s a host plant for gulf frittilaries, a semi-migratory butterfly that often didn’t make it to the Piedmont in colder years, in the two plus decades we lived there.

But the plant itself seems to be fine in the last couple of mild winters here in the mountains of Western North Carolina — it won’t survive a return of the polar vortex, but who knows what our weather may bring in the coming years.