Passiflora rovirosae | The Italian Collection of Maurizio Vecchia

DESCRIPTION:

The minimum required temperature is around 10°C. It is therefore a plant for potting or keeping in a greenhouse or indoors, so as to appreciate the beauty of its foliage.

The yellow-green flowers are borne in racemes and measure 3-4 cm in diameter with a yellow-green colour. The corona is made up of two sets of white filaments. The fruit, fusiform and 6-angled, is about 4 cm long. It contains numerous shiny black seeds that germinate easily. Binodal cuttings will also root equally well.

To imagine their shape, we need to think of an ellipse in which the larger diameter is double the smaller diameter. Remove a more curved segment of the arc at one end and turn it inside. Thus appears, approximately, the shape of the bilobate leaf of the Mexican P. rovirosae.

During their growth, which never seems to stop, they change to green, passing through myriad shades: amber, pink, bronze. There are often multiple colours on the leaf's surface, with the leaf's centre already bright green while the margin still lingers in warmer shades. These colours appear even more prominent and decisive on the pentagonal sectioned staves. They are initially polished mahogany and rosewood, then turn green along with the leaves. The latter stop their growth when they reach 10-12 cm in length and 5-6 cm in width.

The small newly born plants of P. rovirosae already produce singularly shaped leaflets. They have a compact and collected appearance. As the months go by, a transformation then takes place: if the pot is large enough, the leaves begin to grow rapidly, revealing their final shape and their remarkable aesthetic qualities. The young leaves are brick red and shiny.