Do your young Passion flower vines look like ours right now? A little raggedy or totally eaten up? Here’s why: they are the host plant—the only food—for the larva of several butterfly species, especially the Gulf fritillary here in SC. Fritillaries are often mistaken for Monarchs since they share that brilliant orange with black and white spotting, but fritillaries are smaller. Others that need passion vines are Zebra Longwing, Crimson-patch longwing, Red-banded hairstreak, Julia butterfly, Mexican butterfly. At home I’ve been transporting small caterpillars who have stripped my youngest transplant vines over to the mature parent vine, but eggs keep hatching on them! That means a healthy butterfly population contributing to a healthy food web. If we want butterflies, purposely growing the plants they need is important, as is tolerating the munching.
Fortunately our native Passiflora incarnata is tough. Even small plants stripped of their leaves will push out new ones soon. Vines are perennial so will die back after a freeze. But give them a little room to ramble (fence, trellis, pole, shrubs, small trees), good sun, and average to low water, and they return each year to reward you with magical purple flowers, edible fruit called maypops, and clouds of beautiful butterflies from midsummer through fall.