Passiflora elegans | The Italian Collection of Maurizio Vecchia

DESCRIPTION:

The Flora Brasiliensis is one of the great monuments of nineteenth century botany. It was directed by the German botanist and explorer Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, born in Erlangen in 1794 and deceased in Munich in 1868, who dedicated much of his life to the study of South American flora. The work was produced thanks to the contribution of numerous European specialists.

Among them was Maxwell Tylden Masters, an English physician and botanist active in the second half of the century, known for his expertise in morphology and for his long editorial work at the Gardeners’ Chronicle. Within the Flora Brasiliensis he published several monographs devoted to the genus Passiflora, based on materials preserved in European herbaria, and among these appeared the description of Passiflora elegans. His contribution was significant, although some of his diagnoses were later revised on the basis of more complete collections.

I have grown this species for several years and one specimen also grows in my garden. In recent winters, which have been rather mild in my climatic zone in the lower Po Valley, it has withstood the cold without difficulty. Cold spells have been brief and have reached only minus five degrees Celsius, while for most of the season the thermometer has hovered around zero.

In past years episodes of very severe cold had occurred, with lows of up to minus sixteen degrees Celsius and frequent drops to around minus ten. The survival of my hybrid Passiflora ‘Fata Confetto’ under those extreme conditions remains unforgettable. Recently, however, perhaps as a result of changing climate patterns, such harsh temperatures have no longer occurred.

Passiflora elegans, as its name suggests, stands out for the refinement of its flowers, which combine orderly forms with well balanced colours. The white petals, thin and slightly silky, create a delicate backdrop against which the corona opens into a dense and regular display, where white alternates evenly with precisely distributed purple speckling. At the centre, the arrangement of the filaments creates a pale zone that highlights the flower’s internal structure. It is not a large or showy flower, but its balance and colour contrasts give it a quiet elegance that fully justifies the choice of name.

Outdoors the flowers appear only on specimens that are well established and mature, as also happens with Passiflora actinia, to which it bears a strong resemblance. It requires a little patience, but it is a valuable species to accompany the more common passion flowers in the garden, such as Passiflora caerulea and Passiflora incarnata. It is, however, easier to see it bloom abundantly at the end of winter when it is grown in a pot, even one only fifteen centimetres in diameter, provided it is kept sheltered from frost.

Passiflora elegans is found in southern and south eastern Brazil, in the states of São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, and it reaches Uruguay and north eastern Argentina, particularly the province of Misiones. These are regions where winters can be cool and, in the more southern areas, subject to brief frosts. This presence in temperate subtropical areas explains the species’ relative hardiness in the winter climate of the Po Valley, where it copes easily with temperatures around zero and even tolerates light frosts if the soil remains well drained.

Passiflora elegans combines floral elegance, good adaptability and a greater degree of hardiness than one might expect from a subtropical species. It is a discreet yet reliable presence, able to enrich the garden and to offer an interesting perspective on the evolution of passion flowers in the southern Atlantic range