Passifloras are fascinating. When I met them for the first time last autum, it was love on first sight. She named Passiflora aurantia. She had it written on a label. She was so strange, unknown, very ornamental with her curls and mess of branches, with orange flowers that seemed for me from a different world. After two days fighting an internal war I had to come back and really pay for her these nearly seven hundred krowns.

She got a honor place in the middle of my window with new, now shorter curtains. I wanted to have good view on her. And what now? From where are you and what do you like? I sat down to connect to the Internet. There was no czech page about her and of course no advice in czech language, but there was lot of information in other languages. On the first site I discovered that my aurantia has several sisters, just as interesting as she is. So I printed out their pictures. On the second site I visited, I found even more sisters of her, so I also added them to the "family album". Three days later my attemt to do a "family album" ended in the trash box - their world is definitly too big to be printed out on paper.

My second passiflora was Passiflora caerulea. Today I know I had to meet her. This caerulea is the most common passionvine in Czech. She was standing on a shelf in the supermarket, looking very poor and on some very reduced price. She even had no label but this time I knew even without a "family album" she is one of them. Up to this moment I had no idea aurantia will not stay alone on the window.
She started to bloom soon and it was very easy to identify her. But immediately after blooming she was full of some awful insects. In a flowershop, where I got an advice how to defeat these insects, I saw by coinsidence another passiflora. To my not experienced eyes it seemed to be caerulea again and with this one I had enough troubles already. But at home again looking my caerulea I realized the leaves were different.

So I had to go back immediately for the 3rd passionvine in my "collection". Several days later, when she was opening her last blossom for this year (and the only one I have seen on her till now), it gave me this last kick to turn me into a passionvine enthusiast. Such funny, tousled blossoms, violet with white dots ... Jelly Joker, probably

Well, thats how they moved in. Now I have a much bigger window-sill than before, being more and more fullfilled with passionvines. Two lamps are shining 14 hours per day on this dungle to help them survive the Czech winter, a vent is blowing air through their leaves and the curtains are even shorter now. And hopefully I will be successful in convincing my family to move out of this flat into a house attached to a big glass house.