Look at me now!

The self-confessed plant-nerd in me sometimes thinks I should crack out the tape measure when I plant something new, make notes, and then compare it's growth over time. But then I remember I did enough plant measuring to last me a lifetime back when I was researching and writing my thesis: photos will suffice.
I took a photo of my banana passionfruit (Passiflora mollisima syn. Passiflora tarminiana) the other day, and then trawled through my photo archives because I remembered taking a photo back when I planted it. It was one of the first plants I put in after we bought our house.This is our banana passionfruit back in June of 2010 (under one of the neighbour's blooming wattle trees which drape over the fence).


And this is the same vine about 11 months on. Check it out! It's grown loads, and I've been trying to encourage it to grow horizontally along the fence rather than straight up. I've not yet seen a single flower on it and I'm hoping it doesn't turn out to be one of those infamous passionfruit vines that have lots of leaves and never set any fruit.


[By the way, Banana Passionfruit, a South American native, is a very serious weed in some parts of the world like Hawaii and New Zealand, and is starting to become an issue around Melbourne, Sydney, and in Tasmania here in Australia. It is not yet considered a serious pest here in South Australia - I make an educated guess that our rainfall is too low for it - but it is still a plant to be cautious about if you are considering it for your own garden.]