Passiflora incarnata

Few native plants look as improbable as the maypop. Passiflora incarnata, the wild passionflower of the American Southeast, opens intricate three-inch flowers of pale lavender and white, each ringed with a fringed corona of wavy filaments above a central column of stamens and styles. Spanish missionaries read the whole Passion of Christ into that structure, the corona for the crown of thorns, the five anthers for the wounds, the three styles for the nails, and gave the genus its devotional name. Common along field edges and roadsides from Virginia to Florida and west to Texas, the vine climbs by curling tendrils or sprawls across open ground.

The name maypop comes from the fruit, a lime-sized, egg-shaped berry that turns from green to leathery yellow and pops underfoot with a soft report, or, some say, from the shoots that may pop up unexpectedly in May. Inside, a fragrant, gelatinous pulp surrounds the seeds, sweet-tart and reminiscent of guava, long gathered from the wild for eating out of hand, for jellies, and for cool summer drinks. Songbirds and small mammals take the fallen fruit as readily as people do.

Long valued for more than the fruit, the maypop was brewed by Cherokee and other Southeastern peoples into calming teas, and later became one of the best-known nervine herbs of American and European practice, prized as a gentle remedy for restlessness and sleeplessness. In the garden the vine earns a place ecologically as well: the leaves are a host for the caterpillars of the Gulf fritillary and other passion-vine butterflies, and the nectar draws bees, butterflies, and the occasional hummingbird all summer long.

Grow the maypop on a fence, a trellis, a mailbox, or an arbor in full sun and sandy, well-drained soil, and give the roots room, since a settled plant spreads by runners into a generous, sometimes wandering colony. From about zone 7 the top dies back each winter and the vine returns from the root with vigor in late spring, so treat the plant as a fast, flowering perennial where frost is sharp, and site the maypop where the summer-long parade of flowers can be watched at close range.